Comic style strategy-shooter Void Bastards announced
Developers Blue Manchu are turning their sights towards the first person shooter genre with the new announcement of Void Bastards. It’s quite a difference from their previous work, the collectable card/board game Card Hunter, but they say not to expect your typical FPS either. Take a look at the trailer to see for yourself:
It’s a comic book style “strategy-shooter," and they say you’ll need smart planning just as much as good aim to get things done. A kind of "ask questions first, shoot later," if you will.
Players will be leading a bunch of space convicts through dangerous spaceships in order to scavenge all the best space loot. In space! In the Sargasso Nebula, specifically. All the members of the group will have their own traits, though if they die off you can get replacements from “an endless supply of prisoners.” Once you’ve acquired enough bits and bobs from your adventures, you’ll be able to repurpose them into various weapons and tools for future trips, including something called a “distracting robo-kitty” which you can see briefly in the trailer. Campaigns should last somewhere between 12 and 15 hours.
The developers say that the game is inspired by BioShock and System Shock 2, which is handy because it’s being led by Jonathan Chey, co-founder of Irrational Games, the studio behind both.
Void Bastards doesn’t have a release date yet beyond “2019,” but it does have a page on the Humble and Steam stores.
[Disclosure: ex-RPS contributor Cara Ellison is a narrative designer on Void Bastards.]