Think about some of your favorite post-apocalyptic games. What comes to mind? Fallout? Half-Life? The Walking Dead? Games set in a wasteland, destroyed after a global catastrophe with little survivors other than mutant horrors and the odd survivor roaming the streets.
One thing I can promise you is that you don’t think of a small village in the midst of the English countryside, desolate, yet still habitable.
Well, developers The Chinese Room are looking to change this, with their upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Not much has been revealed about the game itself, other than a slight insight into the game last month, but the studio behind Dear Esther have revealed a sixteen minute look into the game’s story and gameplay ahead of the summer 2015 release date.
Tom Turner, studio manager at The Chinese Room said of the game, “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a game about the end of the world like no other. It’s an open world, story-driven mystery about the effects of an earth-shattering event on regular people and how they react to this, come together and face this adversity.”
“The emotion of the story is something that we’re really pushing to the forefront with this game and we really feel that the only fail state for this game is if you come away from the game not caring about the people and what’s happened to them,” he continued. He also went on to say that discovery is very important to the team also, allowing players to uncover the story in whichever order they come across and including passive events which recreate conversations and memories that occurred before the disaster.
It sounds extremely similar to The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, which I reviewed last year and gave a 9/10. I’m very much a fan of games allowing you to use your own initiative and discover things by yourself rather than following a designated path set by the team. It seems that The Chinese Room are following that sentiment and I can only hope that
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is set for release on the PlayStation 4 in Summer 2015. For now, take a look at the sixteen-minute teaser below.
