Online multiplayer games often excel at capturing the intimate scenes of war: the frenzied firefights in claustrophobic ruins or the stealthy march of small squads through hostile territory. The wider business of ferrying supplies to and from the front lines largely remains the realm of strategy games, where players act not as individuals but godlike figures who command the wills of hundreds of soldiers with a drag of the mouse. Foxhole wants to change that. It's a sandbox multiplayer war on a grand scale, complete with fights for territory over sprawling maps that spread out for miles, but with a focus on the player as individual soldier.
Prior to its release on Early Access, lead artist Adam Garib showed me what to expect as he led me over the battlefields in the sidecar of his motorcycle, and I'm fascinated by the concept.
"We give you basic toolsets to build, attack, and move things, but everything else is player driven," Garib said. "What that means is every piece of ammo, every battle, every forwarding operating base is determined by people in the game. We don't interfere."
And then we hop back in the motorcycle and everything goes to hell.
True to that promise, our first activities involve no trigger pulling or grenade lobbing but rather the mundane business that keeps the war machine running. We build a truck in a ramshackle garage far from any battle. We stuff it with supplies and steer it down muddy roads past other players building watchtowers and eventually unload the supplies at a village. There's a sense here that I'm seeing the broad strokes of far more detailed activities, of a game where some players can aid their allies by spending all their time gathering to supply the war effort or scouting for enemy movements. Here behind the lines, it's almost peaceful.
And then we hop back in the motorcycle and everything goes to hell.
Seemingly out of nowhere, there's a tank blocking our path. The gunner fires. We die laughing in flames.
It's a bit of a privilege. Tanks are the alpha test's Big New Thing, and I'm thus one of the lucky few who's been able to see them in action. (Being on the other side of the cannon might have been nice.) Superficially, that first tank looked like a fragile thing from the first World War; a metal box with little of the menace of a Sherman. But in the world of Foxhole, even with its relatively simple aesthetic, that tin can looks like the face of unconquerable death. As it should.
Foxhole may not be a real-time strategy game in the traditional sense, but its top-down perspective allows it to look a little like one in action.
Foxhole is fun, but it doesn't shy from the truth that war offers few second chances. Mortal danger is a constant, which I found only enhances the excitement. This is a game of friendly fire; a game where vehicles can accidentally run you down if you're not paying attention. Death comes easily, particularly since combat (whether by gun or tank) is an intuitive affair of aiming with the right mouse button and firing with the left.
Foxhole may not be a real-time strategy game in the traditional sense, but its top-down perspective allows it to look a little like one in action. I realize my visit took place among dev team members and dedicated alpha players who've been playing Foxhole for months, but I can't help but be impressed by how well it also feels like an RTS when all the pieces are in play.
Following our pitiful last stand on the stone bridge, Adam leads me to a smaller, wooden one our opponents have destroyed in order to force us over its stone counterpart. We repair it quickly through the magic of dev commands, and then Adam calls out in chat for reinforcements to help us charge across. I'm a little surprised by how many players show up. That's love of the game. That's dedication. I'm also surprised when a bullet smacks me in the skull but seconds across the bridge.
I'm a little surprised by how many players show up. That's love of the game. That's dedication.
So back to the tanks. It turns out they're Goliaths that can be taken down with the right stone, especially if that stone happens to be a missile from an RPG. Adam even encourages me to try to take down one myself, on foot, although of course a watchful enemy takes me down with a rifle while I'm still lumbering along with the unwieldy launcher. Adam himself gets struck by a bullet, blood puffing in a little cloud, as he tries to teach me how to lie prone and crouch.
It all worked out anyway. Someone else's missile hit the tank right after, and it burned in ruins in the street. It almost seemed a little too easy, especially since I know some players were counting on tanks to break up the stalemates the free, pre-Early Access version of Foxhole sometimes devolved into.
A concept this ambitious needs a dedicated community to thrive.
I hope they can. I enjoyed Foxhole, and I know much of that enjoyment grew out the marvel of watching so many players working together. Its warzones bustled with life, even with so many digital bodies flopping down dead on the cobblestones. A concept this ambitious needs a dedicated community to thrive, so that the supply lines keep moving in player-built trucks along the roads that lead to the battlezone. Even if Foxhole eventually only manages to keep one server packed, it'll still be a worthwhile experience.
Peek on Reddit and the Steam forums, though, and you'll likely find a few folks fretting that the shift from the free-to-play alpha to today's $20 Early Access launch will empty out even the current hardcore crowd. I'm not really convinced. I played a little on the then-live free-to-play servers after my jaunts with Adam, and found them relatively ho-hum in the absence of the fearsome tanks. The tanks add both menace and something to rally around. Sometimes they even provide a bit of comic relief, such as when a tank chased my own tank around the blocks of a ruined street as though we were playing Pac-Man with multiton death machines. So bring them on. I'm not ready for it to be game over.
Leif Johnson is a contributing editor to IGN who writes about games from a remote ranch in South Texas. He likes tacos and old books. You can chat up him on Twitter at @leifjohnson.
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