Games Workshop announces
Dark Future: Blood Red States, an upcoming video
game based on their post-apocalyptic series, saying this is a reboot of the
series. The
DarkFuture website is
online, and already offers
a teaser trailer, though specifics like target platforms and release dates
are not being revealed just now. Here's word on the game:
Auroch’s Dark
Future: Blood Red States is supported by the Wellcome Trust, and will be a
turn-based strategy game, played out in simultaneous real-time action. The
gameplay is a furious mix of hammering chain-guns, tactical high-speed
manoeuvres and the ripping of metal as vehicles smash into one another. All the
action is conducted against a dark background of the decline of humanity; too
wild to be true and too close for comfort.
Dark Future was originally released as a board game in 1988, and later expanded
into a series of books. The world it inhabits is a very different reality;
cyberpunk more weird than wired.
It's an alternative, bleak, hollowed out America, in 2023. The major cities are
either corporate controlled high-tech gated communities (Patrolled Zones, or PZs)
for those who can pay, or lawless shanty towns for those who can't (NoGos).
Between these is 'The Big Empty', the polluted, wasted Red States of America
where vicious gangs hunt and fight. The atrophied state has all but given up
trying to impose law and order here and instead relies on a new breed of bounty
hunter come highway warrior to keep the roads open, the Sanctioned Operative.
Into this fractured new world the player must make their fortune. The player
runs a Sanctioned Ops agency; taking on missions for bounty outside the PZs. As
well as the tactical action on the road, the player must also manage both the
vehicles and drivers – from upgrades to the front-mounted HMGs to booking a
driver into the clinic for a new set of bionic eyes.