David Jaffe's Drawn To Death Coming In April

Drawn to Death, the multiplayer shooter from God of War creator David Jaffe, will release on the PlayStation 4 on April 4, 2017, according to the official PlayStation blog.

The upcoming game, which takes place the margins of a bored teenager's notebook, sets itself apart from other character-based shooters like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 with its heavily stylized graphics and pursuit-based gameplay. "The 'time to kill' is long in Drawn to Death. Like, really long," Jaffe says. "We do this because we want players to have more chances for chases across the maps—where tables get turned and map knowledge allows hunted players to become the hunters."

Jaffe also explains that Drawn to Death's small match size—the game only supports four players at a time—is intended to keep the game intimate, allowing players to study each other's playstyles and react accordingly, and to cut down on the sense of chaos that characterizes many other multiplayer shooters.

Aesthetically, Jaffe says that his own teenage doodles inspired Drawn to Death's unique art style. While Drawn to Death does have a story, Jaffe and his team focused more on mechanics than plot or world building while developing the game, marking a big change from Jaffe's earlier, sometimes cringe-worthy work on the narrative-heavy God of War series. "The more I do this work and the more games I play, the more I realize I love and admire games for play mechanics," Jaffe explains. "We make sure the game gives players the sense that success or failure in a match was up to them and their choices."

Jaffe also calls out Ninjaw, a grappling hook-wielding human-shark hybrid, as one of his favorite Drawn to Death characters, while the shaxe, a pair of spinning axes attached to a shotgun, is his favorite weapon.

Drawn to Death, originally announced at the 2014 PlayStation Experience in Las Vegas, is a PlayStation 4 exclusive.