Veteran
Posts: 284
 
| ?just a few buildings arranged along a country road. I say sleepy, but a more accurate term might be dead.I don’t know what happened to the owners, but from the piles of bones I have been finding, I suspect nothing good. The other reason I suspect this is that the robot hunters stalking the brush. Not just robot hunters, but robot hunters- moustachioed, becapped, in riding coats or hacking jackets, turning the glowing red of their eyes this way and that, trying to pick me out of the undergrowth. While I crouch here, I’m safe. I could probably withdraw stealthily through the brush. Except that I am starving. Literally starving – my vitality is dangerously close to zero. Inside one of those doorways there might be food, or a flask of tea, or a bottle of stout, any of which would restore my flagging vitals and begin the process of healing some of the hastily-bandaged bullet wounds in my side. Nothing for it. Breaking cover, I make a dash for the nearest house, praying for tea. To one side, I hear a metallic voice barking “What was that?”. Then the shooting starts. Sir (or indeed madam), I am being hunted. Welcome to the village Sir, You Are Being Hunted, the Kickstarter-funded project from Big Robot Runescape games, opened its alpha last week – buyers will eventually get the full game, but in the meantime can play a series of builds, with plans to update approximately once a month. This means that a review is impossible, but the bones (or gears) of the game can be experienced, highlighting two outstanding features – the aesthetics of its world, and the way it is created. Sir… is described as “tweedpunk”, a somewhat unpalatable term representing an irksomely useful shorthand. The Runescape player is dropped into an unfamiliar environment, apparently after a machine they were working on malfunctioned. The five islands that make up the map of this new world are populated by killer robots based on the hunters and hangers-on of the great British fox hunt. They have done in all the humans in their world, it seems, and now they are after you. The absurdity of this is exacerbated by their barks – when spied on unobserved, they complain about the weather and reminisce about when this was all fields in clipped robotic received pronunciation. When a pursuit is successfully eluded, they grind out “lost the bugger!” and return to their patrol. The aesthetic extends to the hunting grounds – each of the five islands has a “biome” – a unique collection of environmental elements. |
done in all the humans in their world
