Is announcing a game on a weekend a sign of humility, or total confidence that your announcement isn’t going to be lost in the shuffle of weekend events when no one is paying attention to the news? I don’t know, but I’m betting that Humble Bundle was going with the latter option when they released the news of Void Bastards on a quiet Saturday afternoon.
Drawing inspiration from classics such as BioShock and System Shock 2, and led by former Irrational Games co-founder Jonathan Chey, Void Bastards looks to be an exciting mix of cel-shaded FPS combat and roguelike strategy and mission planning. Players lead the Void Bastards, a rag-tag team of prisoners, as they try to get out of the Sargasso Nebula. Make decisions about where to go, what to fight, and how to execute a boarding strategy, then jump into the action and try to sway the results in your favor.
Where’s the kaboom?
Oh, there it is!
Players will navigate their tiny escape pod through a vast nebula, choosing what targets to attack, and which to negotiate with or flee from. Loot gained from encounters is used to power the player’s ship, improvise new weapons, and generally make life more difficult for enemies.
Void Bastards is slated to feature a 12-15 hour campaign. Where one prisoner dies, another steps up to carry on the mission, with crafting progress retained between characters. The game is being developed by the Australian based Blue Manchu, whose first game was the award-winning Card Hunter online CCG. From Blue Manchu’s press release about announcing Void Bastards, they said “After learning to build persistent online free-to-play games, we’re following that up with a single-player first-person shooter – because why not?”
Choose your path wisely.
According to publisher Humble Bundle, Void Bastards will be releasing on PC and Xbox One in “Early 2019.” This looks like an exciting project, and we’ll be following progress closely. Players looking for more information should check out the game’s official website, and follow Blue Manchu on Twitter.
