Who says death has to be depressing?
That’s the perspective of Death Inc., a macabrely charming Kickstarter project brought to you by some folks who used to work at Media Molecule, Lionhead, and Criterion, amongst others.
The endeavour is being described as a “pungent reimagining” of the Black Death – yes, the devastating pandemic that laid waste to Europe in the seventeenth century. As you can probably tell already, the game doesn’t treat death as some great mystery or taboo – the country from which no traveller returns – but as a rather banal, bureaucratic process. Or at least initially. This is how we find the game's main character, Grim T. Livingstone; as an employee of the Ministry of Mortality he has become disillusioned by it all – the repetition of dealing out death with grinding efficiency. Where’s the flair? The sense of individuality? So he strikes out on his own, forming Death Inc. – a startup run out of the basement of his elderly relative's cottage.
Death's work is never done.
There’s a pleasing analogy at work between the situation that Grim finds himself in the game and the predicament of its creators. Death Inc. is, after all, a Kickstarter, made by a newly-formed studio working out an office above a bathroom showroom, and the parallel isn’t entirely lost on those working at Ambient Studios. But Kickstarter isn't as novel as it was a year ago – there are lots of projects out there, demanding your attention, and appealing to your wallets. Is there a danger of it being overused?
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I truly believe Kickstarter and things like it are a very strong force for the future. I think a lot of publishers would like you to believe otherwise because traditionally they’ve held all the cards."
“I think overused is very hard to judge,” says Daniel Leaver, the studio's creative director and co-founder. “It’s subjective. For someone who looks at a project on there, and loves it, it’s not overused.”
In fact, he believes it’s more than just a passing fad, a way to circumvent publishers – it might even represent the future of the game’s industry. “I truly believe Kickstarter and things like it are a very strong force for the future. I think a lot of publishers would have you believe otherwise, and would like you to believe otherwise, because traditionally they’ve held all the cards. I think the idea, basically, of games on demand – that is, where you demand a game, and it’s made, is really new at the moment, and it seems strange, but I think in the future that’ll be one of the ways we’ll get things made. I can totally see Steam having a section which is an evolution of Steam Greenlight, where they say here are the pitches – one of which will get made.
“I can’t see why you wouldn’t want that.”
It's clear that they're happier working as a team in this environment. “It feels like coming home. This is how you should make things. You present it to your audience, and you know, hopefully, they’ll learn in time that not everything they see will be great or as polished as we’d like it. I think the Kickstarter crowd really get that.”
From the description above you probably have a good sense of the game’s tone but not necessarily how it plays. Loosely, it can be described as an RTS, but that identity has been spliced with other genres, with such classics as Lemmings and Pikmin being name-checked by the studio.
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Kickstarter felt like less of a risk. That might sound mental to you but it does feel like less of a risk, speaking to the people who will actually play it, as opposed to the suits who think that strategy is dead.”
It’s a strategy game in the sense that you’re tasked with acquiring and marshalling resources, using them to explore and influence an expanding landscape. But it’s the type of game that’s becoming increasingly endangered, and hence the decision to use Kickstarter.
“The strategy genre sadly is becoming more and more niche, and we knew that. Yet I can totally see this game on Steam as a Steam download. We knew with our experience with publishers that they are very precise about what they like these days and fund. And actually Kickstarter felt like less of a risk. That might sound mental to you but it does feel like less of a risk, speaking to the people who will actually play it, as opposed to the suits who think that strategy is dead.”
Leaver even admits, “RTS is maybe a scary word. There are often really good games when you get it, but the barrier to entry is massive. I would like there to be a resurgence in strategy. And hopefully we’ll lead that."
The game has a gorgeous art style.
Death Inc. attempts to undo this perception. The screen is refreshingly uncluttered – the idea is to have no HUD at all – allowing you to revel in the game’s gorgeous art style. It’s bright, bold, and full of colourful caricatures. Think Wind Waker – it has those same beautiful slivers of wind cutting across the screen and those gorgeous opaque blue oceans – but mixed with the sly humour of the gallows.
And that other unwelcoming blight of the RTS – the number of clicks per interaction – has been intentionally reduced, too. Instead, you interact with the world through a variety of fluid gestures, painting a bright pink miasma down the alleys and across the meadows of Medieval Europe. Consequently, gameplay is a smooth and continuous experience, not an RSI-inducing barrage of clicks.
Frothing in the streets!
Once infected, the peasants will obediently follow the path of the noxious cloud spread, and do Death’s bidding – that includes infecting the healthy, ransacking towns, and storming castles. You see, in Death Inc., catching the fatal malady isn’t as devastating as it sounds. The focus isn’t on vomiting blood or letting pus from distended buboes; it’s actually quite a merry affair. When touched by the disease, both the rural and town-dwelling peasants are released from the unbearable tedium of their feudal lives. No more tilling fields, harvesting crops or begging in the mud. In what is a lovely aesthetic detail, they’re visually transformed by the pathogen, their complexions touched by Grim’s favourite shade of pink.
There’s talk of playful variation and variety. Not every level will simply be a case of making the grinding journey from bustling port to a fortified castle, infecting the populace along the way. It’s hoped that each level will somehow play upon this central mechanic in unexpected ways. For instance, imagine a level in which you control not an entire horde of infected plebs but a single plague victim, who you must guide along the corridors of a heavily-guarded castle in order to take down a high-profile target. There will also be environmental problems that can be approached in multiple ways. For instance, do you use the infected to raise the castle gate, invading en masse, or do you load them on to a nearby trebuchet to lead a more targeted attack? They're not puzzles as such, just alternate ways of playing out scenarios.
Knocking at the gates.
But it's important to note that a lot of these features currently exist in the form of ideas and working models, underscoring the inherent dilemma of Kickstarter. You want to promise things, you want to impress, and you want to attract as much investment as possible by appealing to a wide audience, yet you don’t want to commit yourself to something which might not work when built. Fortunately, Ambient Studios is well aware of this risk. “That’s something we all really want to avoid is over-promising. Because it’s very easy to get excited. You come to visit us, and say you said something like, ‘wouldn’t it be really good if this unit could jump over the wall?’ Human nature says that I should agree, say ‘yeah, brilliant’. But you’ll go away thinking that’s a thing. And you’ve already over-promised, so unfortunately you have to learn to say no to people.” Promises aside, Ambient is certainly crafting a game that delivers on both charm and accessibility. It's time to welcome the Reaper.
So what next for Death Inc.? The Kickstarter has 2 weeks left to go – and there's a myriad of incentives for investment – but if your interest has been piqued, there's a playable demo of the game now available for PC, Mac, and LINUX.
Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. In death, he hopes to be the afterlife's leading bio-exorcist. Follow him on IGN and Twitter.
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