Blackstorm

I will just make this quick: You have to run your OWN dedicated server in order to play this game at all. There are no regular servers running. As soon as you and your buddies are done you are going to shutdown the server and kick everyone off of it who was in it. This is silly. You cannot have players have to run their own dedicated servers in order to get people into the game to play. Most people won't know the first thing about setting up these servers and will just uninstall as soon as they get in (like I did) and see that there isn't a single person playing the game because of the hoops you need to jump through just to get it started. GET SERVERS.

As a student project, Blackstorm is actually quite impressive -- especially if this was a single semester project by a typical group. Not sure which class this was for or if it was some sort of senior project. Depending on the exact circumstances (and assuming the underlying code is of the same quality as the game), this would definitely pass an undergraduate senior degree project. As a game preservationist that focuses on multiplayer and MMO titles, including dedicated server software is a huge plus. It helps ensure this game will at least have a realistic chance of surviving much longer than if the servers were only hosted by the development team. The game itself is serviceable. Controls are responsive. I experienced frequent frame drops on three different machines I tested this on, which is likely due to this game needing another optimization pass. If it was designed to be a commercial product, it would also require extensive work to the UI, settings, etc. If I take off my game preservationist and former graduate student hats and focus on this product solely as a commercial free-to-play battle royale title for gamers, this title is definitely difficult to actually recommend. The server is not easy to configure and even when ports are correctly forwarded, it seems to be prone to crashing or having other issues. This might be the result of hosting 7 other dedicated servers on the same box. Perhaps there's a software conflict? There's also not a lot of content, not a lot of customization options, optimization issues, and really nothing to keep someone playing for an extended period. If you are solely looking for a game to play and you don't specifically like the subject matter, have friends to bring, and a bit of technical expertise -- avoid this title. I'm giving it a thumbs up for making my preservationist / archivist activities much, much easier and because it is a passing title for what it is stated to be -- a university project.