Qu'est-ce Que C'est: Serial Killer Roguelike

A lot of people have mailed us about this, mainly after GSW posted about it, thinking that it's our sort of thing. I could be hurt, if I still had any human emotions left. Anyway, it's a serial killer rogue game. As in, you play a serial killer and cut people up. It's the logical philosophical extension of Dwarf Fortress' devotion to individually modelling body parts, I suppose. I've been holding off on posting about it, as I assumed I'd be able to look at its alpha but... well, now I've gone and actually looked, nothing's been released yet. This both surprises me (rogues seem to release early and often) and sets off alarm bells, as Rogue-like footage isn't exactly tricky to fake. With that proviso, you'll find some more details and the videos showing off interaction and character creation below...

EDIT: Yes, fake.

It apparently started work as a Dexter-fan-project. As in, the serial killer on the TV show, not Walker's cat. But, in the way of feature bloat, it's grown into something that simulates more generally the concept of stalking, murdering, eating and pooping in their gaping body cavities and/or comment thread trolling. He's been at work at it for five months, but the plan is to have lots of features. Like... well, lots of material stuff (inspired by Dwarf Fortress) where characters have lots of different elements. It's a bit buggy right now. "I recently bit someone and his entire body basically exploded into individual pieces", the creator Crimson King said. Which makes it more the shame he hasn't released it, says I. Other interesting features include crime-tracking by the police and generally building towards a city populated with NPCs with schedules and their own factions.
There's a handy disclaimer on the Youtube footage...

Keep in mind that this is a GAME, and that I am not advocating or condoning murder or any of the crimes that take place in it. I feel that the subject of serial killers, specifically the psychological conditions that drive them to do what they do, is one of interest and will hopefully translate into a unique game that has a vast number of potential options for play.

Phew. Glad to know he's not actually advocating it.

With that in mind, here's some footage...

He also notes that the Pre-generated characters based on real serial killer names won't be in any released version, which is probably just as well, as it'll leave room for lots of mod content.

Here's the current character generation. Skip past the start, which is just defining your physical abilities, and go straight to the mental conditions section, where you appear to be able to choose multiple abilities from a list. For example, the example they select is a Vigilante Cannibal who can only actually kill people who are bad people and he... oh, you know. Other interesting ones include Dissociative Personality disorder, which means you have something inside you which forces you to do bad things occasionally – like when I buy a new pack of Skaven before I've painted all the old ones, Jim writes another philosophical treatise about bricks or when Alec skins and eats a dude.

There's also “Insane” which is the sort of heavy-handed lazy bullshit which makes me worry about the person making the game. Frankly, if you want to make a quasi-realistic serial killer game, do the bloody research.

Yeah, I've lost my jovial tone as I've gone through the post. Just stinks of basic teenage nihilism, bless 'em. But hey! socially unacceptable teenage nihilistic rogue-likes are pretty much my thing, and if anything's ever released, I'm sure I'll do something akin to Rebel Without A Pause-Key with it. Until then, you can follow its development at its thread over at Rogue Temple.

Thanks for Mr Mendes for being the first to contact us about this and Ms Alexander for being the first French speaker within internet-reach.