Devlog

Introducing Dead Air — and where 0.1.3 stands

Dead Air concept art: a fog-bound main street splitting open into a glowing grate, a shotgun in the foreground and a hulking shape in the fog.

We have started a second game. Its working title is Dead Air. The name hasn’t been cleared yet, so it may change before anything is on sale.

What it is

Dead Air is a fast, loud first-person shooter set in a small mill town that keeps turning into Hell. You play Rick “Rattle” Rourke, a washed-up late-night radio shock-jock. One night his station picks up a frequency that drags the whole fog-choked town into somewhere much worse. The only way off the air is to fight through it, one broadcast zone at a time.

It draws on classic 90s shooters and fog-bound survival horror. It has the pace of modern Doom, a loudmouth hero in the spirit of Duke Nukem 3D, and a town wrapped in Silent Hill-style fog. The ideas below are what we are building toward:

  • Speed is survival. You are always moving: dash, double jump, slide. Health and ammo come from fighting aggressively, not from hiding.
  • The fog lies. Between fights the town is quiet and grey and you can barely see. Every map shifts at least once into a rusted, burning Otherworld, with sirens, sealed doors and new paths. The big fights happen there.
  • Your radio is your early warning. A pocket radio crackles as enemies get close, and each kind of creature has its own static. You hear them before you see them. Switch it off and you are quieter, but blind.
  • Levels, not an open world. You play separate maps with keys, secrets, par times and an end-of-level tally, read out as a call-in radio segment.
  • The jokes belong to the hero, the horror to the world. Rick talks back, the town is full of things to break, and the monsters are never a joke.

Where it stands

Dead Air is in development in Unreal Engine 5.8. The design is written, and the concept art on this page sets the look: a fog world in teal-grey and neon, an Otherworld in rust and ember. We are now building the first playable version of Episode 1. It is meant to be a complete first episode, with its maps, weapons, enemies, HUD and menus, not a greybox test. That build is internal for now. When there is something ready to share, supporters will see it first, the same way they did with The Dark Is Sleepless. There is no date yet, and there won’t be one until it plays well.

The concept art shows mood, not in-game footage. The Dead Air page has the pitch, the art and where things stand, and the roadmap now has a Dead Air column.

Dead Air concept art: the Otherworld mill, with rusted catwalks over a burning pit and two creatures closing in.

The Dark Is Sleepless: 0.1.3 so far

Work on The Dark Is Sleepless is paused for a short while as the studio builds that first Dead Air playable. It hasn’t stopped: 0.1.2 is still the live build on the launcher, and these fixes for 0.1.3 are already made and saved to the project. None of them is packaged yet.

  • No firing from inside cover. You can only shoot or aim from cover while leaning out. The server checks it too.
  • The main menu highlights the right button. Continue is the main button when you have a save, and New game when you don’t.
  • Clothing pickups have names. The prompt reads “Blue jeans” and so on instead of an empty name.
  • Players have their own names. Instead of everyone being “Merritt”, your name comes from Steam, your Sleepless account or your platform account, and a name you type stays. The map markers for your crew show each player’s own name.
  • Smoother footwork. The MetaHuman characters no longer run a frame behind their animation, which halves how far a planted foot slides.

Still to do for 0.1.3: stopping other players from appearing to ice-skate in co-op, then packaging and testing the build. The progress page tracks it step by step.

Alpha access for both games goes to supporters first, via the Patreon. Questions or ideas? Come and talk to us on the forum.