You may remember Card Hunter, the deck-building browser game from Blue Manchu. The studio, headed by ex-Irrational/Looking Glass developer Jon Chey, has been mostly quiet the last few years. But that’s only because it’s been working on Void Bastards, an FPS where you board derelict spaceships searching for supplies, while trying to stay alive.
Here’s how Blue Manchu describes it, courtesy of the Steam page:
Your task is to lead the rag-tag Void Bastards out of the Sargasso Nebula. You make the decisions: where to go, what to do and who to fight. And then you must carry out that strategy in the face of strange and terrible enemies.
The idea is that, for each abandoned ship you encounter, you’ll have to carefully plan your way through hazards and commandeered onboard systems and “use [them] to your advantage”:
Move carefully through the dangerous ships, searching for supplies and manipulating control systems. React to what you find – will you detour to the generator to bring the power back online or will you fight your way into the security module to disable the ship’s defenses? Choose carefully when to fight, when to run and when just to be a bastard.
Those looking for an arcing narrative will be pleased, with the game featuring a single-player campaign of 12-plus hours.
Ken Levine’s already fan, but that’s not a big surprise.
I’ve played 36 hours of this game in beta. It’s amazing. The guy who created it co-founded Irrational, so I may be biased. But I ain’t that biased. It’s been my go-to-game for weeks. https://t.co/PqkgAOFa1g
— Ken Levine (@levine) November 11, 2018
The game reminds me (in a good way) of Deadnaut, a tactical RTS I worked on back in 2015. Which is great, because Deadnaut is awesome — I should know — and Void Bastards sounds awesome, too.
Currently, it’s slated for release in 2019, but feel free to give it the once-over on Steam.
Void Bastards [Steam]
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