Indie studio Pink Sq. Video games simply introduced SlavicPunk: Oldtimer, an isometric shooter/hacker/sneaker primarily based on the fiction of Polish writer Michał Gołkowski. You play a non-public 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 “strong fight and motion programs, in addition to a modular weapon improve system”. Stealth is unquestionably an choice, although perhaps not non-lethal stealth given all of the individuals who get shot or stabbed within the again through 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 way of shall 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 fairly generic story, however what’s promising is that alongside the standard imagery of dystopian streets with flying automobiles and hologram strippers are extra culturally particular components, just like the signal depicting a neon woman 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 quite than Main Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost within the Shell.
Pink Sq. says the builders started by asking themselves, “what was the world going to appear to be in a few many years? How would a hypothetical Central and Japanese 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an amazing deal of affect upon the sport’s creative selections, together with a mixture of futuristic-esque and overly outdated applied sciences, the grim, brutalist structure typical of the post-communist nations, the character’s not-so-obvious ethical selections and the customarily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, typically counting on their wits and sheer luck to make it to the subsequent paycheck with out dropping their minds.”
Pink Sq. can be engaged on a tabletop RPG in the identical setting, known as SibirPunk, which it plans to crowdfund through the Kickstarter-but-only-for-games platform Gamefound (opens in new tab). SlavicPunk: Oldtimer is scheduled for launch within the second quarter of 2023 through Steam (opens in new tab).
