Chernobylite enters early access next month
Ride into the danger zone
Since their succesful Kickstarter bagged double their target, Poland-based The Farm 51 have announced that their ambitious Stalker-esque survival horror Chernobylite will enter Steam Early Access on the 16th of October, with a full release an estimated 10 to 14 months later. It's a game, not a mineral or a low-calorie power plant.
By 2030, 12% of people on Earth will have worked on a game set in or around Pripyat, but this one looks like it's doing its own thing rather than blindly copying. The environments, 3D scanned from the real area, look rather shiny too. You can see for yourself below.
Stalker-ish games tend to capture all the messy jank of the original mutant-dodging trilogy but none of its compelling atmosphere or setting. Chernobylite looks to be aiming for a story-driven approach, as you search the exclusion zone 30 years after losing your girlfriend there, while dodging monsters and interacting with the local Stalkers, for good or ill.
The devs promise said story is "non-linear, unpredictable and fully dependent on player’s decisions, which leads to many possible endings", offer survival and crafting bits, and an insistence that all the AI lads have their own agenda and shouldn't be trusted. Good for them.
The Farm 51 have yet to really knock a game out of the park, but Alec Meer (all bow) was rather taken with Get Even, despite some wonky bits, and I've a bit of a soft spot for their 2009 WWI-triggers-apocalypse horror shooter Necrovision. Which was also janky and full of good ideas done a bit wrong. Perhaps they're exactly the right people to pull this one off.
You can keep an eye on Chernobylite on Steam.