Wildlight’s free-to-play shooter Highguard was not the success that the studio wanted to see, and now senior level designer Alex Graner has said he thinks the gameplay being so intense didn’t help.
He said on the Quad Damage podcast that Highguard releasing as a 3v3-only game required “such a high intensity of communication” with teammates. “It doesn’t leave much room for casualness. I think that was the biggest thing that turned a lot of players off Highguard,” he said, as reported by Kotaku.
“3v3 duos is always the sweatiest version of anything like battle royale, objective modes, wingman, you know it, you name it,” Graner added.
Graner went on to say that Highguard’s multi-stage setup also did not help with regards to welcoming in new players. “It has all these rules, which I think works at a really high level, but when players are first coming in it’s a lot to grasp,” he explained.
The 3v3 setup requires “high-skill movement and shooting,” which also did not help Highguard appeal to everyone, Graner said. “So if you just have a few bad games or your teammates aren’t sticking together, you’re just going to get rolled, and it’s very hard to 1v2 in our game,” he said.
Wildlight later added a 5v5 mode, and another mode that removed the game’s looting phase entirely, but these efforts have not brought players back in any meaningful way, at least not on Steam.
Finally, Graner said Highguard’s setup as a team-based shooter was the “biggest thing” in regards to why the game came up short. “People just kind of turned it off because they didn’t have the team,” he said.
Reports said Wildlight was funded in part by Chinese gaming giant Tencent, and the company reportedly pulled funding after Highguard’s release came up short. This, in turn, led Wildlight to lay off the majority of its staff, with only a reported 20 people or so remaining at the company.
Beyond the issues mentioned by Graner above, anonymous sources said Highguard’s struggles also came down to the team feeling overconfident.
Highguard remains online and playable across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. For more, check out GameSpot’s Highguard review, in which we called the game “unoriginal.”