Fighting For One Parachute With Schell Games

Schell Games developer Adam Whalen joined me recently in Project Freefall.

In minutes, we were laughing and spinning uncontrollably toward the ground in a battle for a single parachute.

Eight players jump out of a plane, but only one gets to land safely. These fast-paced matches rarely last more than a couple of minutes, with every second you’re falling feeling like an eternity of trying to maneuver yourself into position to snatch the parachute.

“We’re always falling, and that’s the gimmick, and we’re really trying to lean into that,” Whalen said. “You want to be the one holding the chute before you hit the ground.”

There are numerous tools to grab on the way down, and more are being made by Schell Games. For example, a blinding ink bomb to the face is an extraordinary problem to overcome mid-air.

“We just added that a couple weeks ago,” Whalen said. “Our audio guy was bored. He enjoyed that one.”

The overall effect here is basically Mario Kart in the air, as we realized in our play session, with gameplay that’s both competitive and tactical while lighthearted and approachable.

Developers tell us that Project Freefall started as a VR-only prototype built inside Meta’s Horizon Worlds.

“We just doctored this up really quickly, we had a prototype in Horizon Worlds and thought, Oh, this feels neat. So we brought it into Unreal.”

Schell Games also notes on its store page it used generative AI to “explore new ideas,” and we’ll look to cover this aspect of development further in a future article.

As for the flatscreen mode for PCs on Steam, that came out of a need for convenience during the development cycle.

“We built that because when we were deving, we didn’t want to be in the headset all day,” Whalen said with a laugh.

Boosters and a grappling hook make you feel in control while falling; there are bats and bombs to grab. Whalen points out they need to get the balance just right so you don’t have too much control and some amount of chance to it too.

“It was me and two or three others working on it between projects,” Whalen said of the genesis of the game. “Once we got traction, it was like, Oh, this is actually really fun. So we put real time into it. Cumulatively, maybe a year, but it started small.”

While the chaos of the battle royale style is fun, I can see playing it in a team setting as appealing. During the later stages of these sessions, some players already band together to take out a player who keeps hogging the parachute. Until those last few hundred feet, when everyone thinks only of themselves.

“Right now, this is a good mode to showcase the mechanic—it’s thin, but we’re looking at cooperative and team-based modes too. We could do a lot there,” Whalen said.

Project Freefall feels like Schell Games is cutting loose and trying something new. It’s silly, chaotic, and just plain fun. The laughter was constant, the competition fierce, and the early access version has undeniable potential.

If Schell Games sticks the landing, Project Freefall could be VR’s next go-to party game. It’s out now in early access as a free-to-play game on Quest, while the Steam version is flatscreen only.