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Frequently asked questions

It all began with a simple idea fueled by a deep passion. As a small business, we pride ourselves on personal attention and dedication to every detail. Our approach is rooted in quality and integrity, ensuring that everything we do reflects our commitment to excellence.

What game modes are there?

Free For All - Players fight through rounds where the last player standing wins. This was originally a quick-and-dirty game mode I created so I could start testing multiplayer as early as possible. Because of that, the current version probably won't exist in exactly the same form in the final game. I'm considering turning it into more of an extraction-style mode instead. For example, a helicopter could arrive somewhere on the map and players would need to reach it and extract. The winner could either be the first player to successfully extract or the last surviving player.

Explore - Explore is currently the only game mode designed to be played alone. Other multiplayer game modes will generally end immediately if you start them without another player. Explore is primarily designed for walking around the maps, testing weapons, experimenting with mechanics, and generally messing around. It's also basically my personal development playground, so you'll currently find things like respawning grenades and equipment throughout the map. That won't necessarily be the case in the final game. There is currently no traditional respawning in Explore either. Rounds follow a structure similar to Free For All, except the round only ends once everyone in the session is dead.

Defuse - Defuse is currently the main game mode. It's Kickback's version of a classic Search & Destroy mode. The Terrorist team has a bomb that they must protect until it detonates. The Counter-Terrorist team must push into the objective and defuse it. To defuse the bomb, players need to find the code displayed on tablets located around the bomb site and enter that code into the tablet mounted on their character. If the code is entered successfully, the bomb is defused and the Counter-Terrorists win. There will be more games and maps being added as the game ages. There will probably be another game mode yet to be determined on release.

What classes are there?

Kickback currently has four main classes. Each class is designed around a different combat role and has its own weapon selection, movement characteristics, equipment advantages, and specialized utility.

Assault - Assault is the main general-purpose class. It isn't heavily specialized toward any one role and is designed primarily around rifles suited for medium- to long-range combat. If you want a flexible class that can perform well in most situations, Assault is intended to be the default choice.

Heavy - Heavy specializes in larger and more powerful weapons. Heavy weapons will typically deal more damage, have larger magazine capacities, and favor sustained fire. The Heavy class also receives additional utility equipment for free, allowing them to carry more equipment without spending as much of their loadout budget. The tradeoff is mobility, with Heavy players moving approximately 10% slower by default.

Engineer - Engineer specializes in close-range combat and specialized equipment. Their weapon selection focuses primarily on shotguns, SMGs, and other close-range weapons. Engineers will also receive cheaper access to body armor, making them well suited for pushing into dangerous close-quarters areas. They will also have access to certain specialized utility that isn't normally available to every class, such as tear gas and C4. Scout - Scout is the game's long-range and reconnaissance-focused class. Scout players move approximately 10% faster by default, making them the fastest standard class. Their primary weapon selection focuses on sniper rifles and DMRs. Scouts will also have access to specialized reconnaissance equipment, such as mountable cameras that can be positioned somewhere in the environment and monitored remotely. These could be used to watch your back while sniping, monitor an entrance, check around dangerous corners, keep an eye on an objective, or provide information to your team without exposing yourself. Please keep in mind that the current demo is intentionally less restrictive than the final game will be. I've made some weapons, equipment, and utility available to more classes during development so that they're easier to test. As development continues, class restrictions will become closer to the roles described above.

This sounds like several other games. What makes Kickback different?
Kickback definitely takes inspiration from other shooters, but it's ultimately my own vision of what I would like to see in a VR tactical shooter. There are a million little things I'm working on that I really want people to experience. A lot of them aren't giant headline features. They're small details that you might not consciously notice at first, but when everything works together they make the game feel considerably more immersive. My goal is to push realism as far as I reasonably can without sacrificing good gameplay or making the game frustrating to play.

Here are some things I want you to pay attention to when you try the game:

Speed of Sound - Gunshots are actually delayed based on distance because sound doesn't travel instantly. At normal combat distances the difference is very small, but at longer ranges you'll see something happen slightly before you hear it.

Flashbangs - Flashbangs will really mess you up. They don't simply turn your screen white. Flashbangs can distort your vision and create visual effects intended to simulate being heavily disoriented. It can be intense for players without strong VR legs, but it adds a huge amount of immersion.

Tear Gas - Tear gas causes your vision to become blurry and makes your character cough. If you're wearing a gas mask, you're protected from these effects.

Advanced Recoil - Weapon recoil is much more complicated than simply moving your gun upward. Each weapon has individualized pitch, yaw, roll, and blowback. The recoil number shown on the loadout screen is essentially a simplified score representing all of those different factors.

Sustained-Fire Accuracy - Weapons become progressively less accurate during long periods of sustained fire. Accuracy recovers after you stop firing and allow the weapon to settle. This helps make controlled bursts more useful instead of having every weapon remain perfectly consistent during an entire magazine dump.

Gunshot and Bullet Distortion - Gunshots create a subtle heat-wave distortion effect around the muzzle. Bullets traveling through the air can create a similar distortion. This effect is extremely difficult to show properly in a normal video, but inside VR it looks SOOO good.

Movement Momentum - Players have momentum when moving quickly. I spent a lot of time thinking about how movement should feel when you're sprinting compared with crouch walking, slowly clearing a corner, or suddenly changing direction. The goal is to give your character a believable sense of weight without making it feel like you're ice skating.

Bullet Penetration - Penetration is heavily customized. Different materials have different resistance to bullets. Drywall is relatively easy to shoot through, wood provides more resistance, brick walls are significantly harder to penetrate, and very thick or durable materials may stop rounds completely. Bullets also lose damage as they travel through materials. Penetration is connected to the weapon's damage and ammunition characteristics, so something like a .50 caliber BMR can penetrate substantially more material than something like a .22.

Ammo Types - Kickback currently includes Armor Piercing, Hollow Point, Tracer, and standard Full Metal Jacket ammunition. Armor Piercing rounds provide significantly better penetration and can defeat or ignore certain types of body armor. Hollow Point rounds deal increased damage to unarmored targets, but expand on impact and therefore have significantly worse penetration. Tracer rounds make the projectile's path much easier to see during combat and also just look really cool. FMJ is the standard ammunition and is generally cheaper, allowing you to save money for other parts of your loadout.
 
 
Customizable Body Armor - Body armor isn't simply an on/off equipment slot. You can independently equip protection for your arms, legs, upper torso, and lower torso. Heavier armor reduces mobility and slows your character. There are also hybrid armor options that provide less protection while having a much smaller impact on movement. Armor also costs money, so completely covering your character can become expensive and force you to make sacrifices elsewhere in your loadout.

Weapon Weight - Different weapons physically feel different to handle. Heavier weapons receive stronger weapon smoothing, which creates a small amount of resistance when making extremely fast movements. That means a heavy weapon can take slightly longer to snap onto a target. However, that same additional weight also helps stabilize the weapon, making it easier to hold steadily once you're aiming.

Dynamic Character Leaning - Character models use a dynamic leaning system based on how you're physically moving in your playspace. If you lean around a corner in real life, your character actually leans with you. The system analyzes your real-world movement and determines whether you're actually leaning or simply walking around your room. If you move too far, your character's feet reposition underneath you instead of allowing you to run across your room while your character somehow performs a ridiculous 90-degree lean. Your movement speed is also capped so physically running through your room while simultaneously holding the joystick forward doesn't allow you to run faster than everyone else.

Sound Occlusion - This is a big one. Sound actually reacts to the environment. If someone talks, walks, reloads, or fires a weapon from behind a wall, the sound becomes muffled. The system can also recognize heavily separated areas. For example, imagine one player standing on a street while another player is inside a tunnel underneath that street. Footsteps and voices can become completely blocked between those spaces, while something extremely loud like a gunshot may still pass through as a heavily muffled sound. This makes buildings, tunnels, walls, and other environmental geometry actually matter when you're listening for another player.

Downed Players Can Still Fight - Getting downed doesn't turn your character into an inactive object lying on the floor. While downed, you can still crawl, use certain equipment, throw utility, pick up weapons, and fire your gun. If you're holding a rifle when you're downed, you'll drop it. You'll actually have to crawl over to the weapon and pick it back up if you want to continue fighting. Shooting while downed also has significantly increased recoil. Utility throws are severely weakened too. You're not going to be throwing a grenade halfway across the map while lying on the ground; you might manage roughly 5-10 feet.

Focus on PCVR Graphics - One of my biggest priorities is making Kickback look as good as I possibly can. I want high-quality environments, weapons, effects, lighting, and visuals that take advantage of what modern PCVR hardware can actually do. Right now, PCVR visual quality is the priority.

Is Kickback PCVR only, or will it come to Quest?
Right now, I'm focusing primarily on PCVR, but that does not mean I'm ignoring Quest. As I develop Kickback, I'm intentionally writing systems in ways that should eventually make them easier to scale down for standalone VR without sacrificing more than necessary. I also have a lot of experience optimizing VR environments. I spent years creating Onward maps that needed to look good while running on standalone hardware, including hardware as old as the original Quest 1. That experience gives me a pretty good idea of what I'm getting myself into. However, Kickback has systems that are substantially more demanding than a normal standalone VR game. Things like advanced sound occlusion, flashbang distortion, tear gas effects, downed-player visual effects, large environments, detailed weapons, player simulation, and higher-quality shaders and effects all cost performance. Because of that, even after the PCVR version is released, getting Kickback running properly on standalone Quest will require a significant amount of additional optimization. I absolutely believe in releasing on Quest, but I'm not willing to destroy the PCVR version's visuals just to make that happen immediately. I'd rather build the game I actually want to build, make it look incredible on PCVR, and then carefully optimize it for standalone hardware afterward. If that means waiting for newer hardware, even something like Quest 4, then that's what I'll do. That said, I think there's a very realistic possibility of creating a good Quest 3 version.

Quest 2 will not be supported.
 

When is this coming out?

It really just depends when its ready, but given how things have been going, I would estimate late 2027.