Indie studio Crimson Sq. Video games simply introduced SlavicPunk: Oldtimer, an isometric shooter/hacker/sneaker based mostly on the fiction of Polish creator Michał Gołkowski. You play a personal detective with a complete lot of points and an intimidating sitcom dad moustache who goes up towards the standard assortment of gangs and corrupt company executives.
SlavicPunk: Oldtimer guarantees “stable fight and motion methods, in addition to a modular weapon improve system”. Stealth is certainly an possibility, although possibly not non-lethal stealth given all of the individuals who get shot or stabbed within the again throughout the trailer. In addition to an assortment of weapons and cybernetic upgrades, it will have “Battlehacking”, which the builders describe as “our personal hi-tech spellcasting system”.
Between harmful areas that gamers might want to sneak and/or shoot their approach by will likely be moments of peace the place you get to discover the town, discovering sidequests and pushing alongside the plot, which includes stolen knowledge and the company chargeable for ruining your metropolis.
That seems like a reasonably generic story, however what’s promising is that alongside the standard imagery of dystopian streets with flying vehicles and hologram strippers are extra culturally particular parts, just like the signal depicting a neon lady who wears an ushanka and does goose steps as a substitute of excessive kicks. It jogs my memory of Peripeteia solely isometric, and also you’re enjoying the grizzliest man who ever lived slightly than Main Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost within the Shell.
Crimson Sq. says the builders started by asking themselves, “what was the world going to appear to be in a few a long time? How would a hypothetical Central and Jap European metropolis and its inhabitants differ from, say, Blade Runner’s L.A. or Akira’s Neo Tokyo?’.
“The makes an attempt to reply this puzzle has had an incredible deal of affect upon the sport’s inventive selections, together with a mixture of futuristic-esque and overly outdated applied sciences, the grim, brutalist structure typical of the post-communist international locations, the character’s not-so-obvious ethical selections and the customarily crudely makeshift, yank-and-tuck character and ambiance of an surroundings overpacked with folks compelled to deal with the uneven distribution of products and wealth, usually counting on their wits and sheer luck to make it to the subsequent paycheck with out shedding their minds.”
Crimson Sq. can be engaged on a tabletop RPG in the identical setting, referred to as SibirPunk, which it plans to crowdfund by way of the Kickstarter-but-only-for-games platform Gamefound (opens in new tab). SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is scheduled for launch within the second quarter of 2023 by way of Steam (opens in new tab).