Shadowgun: DeadZone

Madfinger Games built Shadowgun: DeadZone as an online spin-off of its 2011 single-player shooter Shadowgun, using the same engine, art and setting while throwing out the campaign entirely. A public beta arrived on Google Play in October 2012, first for phones and tablets with NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip and soon after for other Android devices, and the beta tag came off on November 15, 2012.

What Is Shadowgun: DeadZone

It is a team-based third-person shooter for up to twelve players. Matches pit two sides against each other on compact maps built from the Shadowgun world, with cover, catwalks and a mix of indoor and outdoor spaces. In 2012 the fact that a phone could host twelve-player matches with console-style visuals was the main selling point, and Android players had it before iOS, since Apple initially rejected the game for reasons Madfinger did not reveal at the time.

Death Match And Zone Control In Shadowgun: DeadZone

Only two modes were ever on offer. Death Match is the plain version, in which the team with more kills wins. Zone Control works like a domination mode, where teams fight over capture points, and reviewers felt its maps, with their placed cover barriers, suited the game best. Six maps shipped at launch, three for each mode, and Madfinger restricted the level range of each match so that new players were not thrown straight against veterans, though that also made it hard for top-ranked players to find games.

Loadouts, Weapons And What Gold Bought

Guns came in families, each trading fire rate, damage and clip size:

• Assault rifles for all-round use
• Plasma weapons
• Rocket launchers, which many players fired almost blindly in Death Match
• Machine guns

Limited item slots held health and ammo regenerators, grenades and deployable turrets, and upgrades increased health and movement speed. The control layout could be rearranged completely, and gamepads were supported once connected. Premium gold, bought with real money, went on hats and skins, while a one-month premium subscription for $1.99 gave 50 percent more cash and experience. Madfinger promised none of this would decide fights, and early reviews agreed.

Madfinger Closed DeadZone In 2019

The PC and Mac versions were discontinued in 2015. iOS access ended in December 2018, Android followed in March 2019, and Madfinger announced that the whole project would close on April 1, 2019, handing every remaining player 200,000 gold as a farewell. Since DeadZone was online-only, it cannot be played today, and Google Play no longer offers it. Old installation files online will not help, because the matchmaking servers are gone.

In 2015 Madfinger did something unusual for a still-running game. It published the Game Master’s Kit on the Unity Asset Store, a stripped-down Unity project with client and server code, the Death Match and domination mechanics and two of the original maps. Matchmaking, anti-cheat, monetisation and analytics were left out, so the kit was a learning resource for developers rather than a way to keep the game alive.

What Players Remember About It

Reviews in 2012 called it one of the best online shooters on mobile. Complaints focused on the small number of modes, the lack of any single-player or practice option, frame rates that could have been smoother and voice chat for premium users that did not always work. People who played it for years tend to recall the fast respawns on the smaller Zone Control maps and the moment rockets started flying from every direction.

Where The Shadowgun Series Went Next

Madfinger later released Shadowgun Legends in 2018, which mixes a story campaign with online play, and Shadowgun War Games, a team shooter that itself closed in 2021. For anyone who misses DeadZone’s straightforward online firefights, Legends is the closest thing the studio still offers on Android.