I love dirty games. Gods Will be Watching was a dirty game and I loved it. I need more dirty games. And looks like Hellcrest might be the dirtiest of dirty games.
You’re trapped. There’s disease. There are brutal thugs, both in uniform and without. Nasty little weapons worse than death. Tragedy of commons. And cannibalism. No, I’m not talking about South Central L.A. It’s Hellcrest, and you’re in a prison on an isolated island.
The game’s currently raising dough on Kickstarter (about $70 of $12K with 21 days remaining).
The storyline is like one of those writing prompts your hippie English teacher used to give you in college:
Think of the worst possible place you could be in the worst possible situation, and write a story about that.
So, how about this. You’re in prison in the middle of the ocean. The guards don’t give a rat’s butt about you. People are dying. Killing each other? Yes. Eating each other? Yes. And there’s a disease. Oh, YES!
Like Gods Will be Watching, it’s retro pixel graphics. Which could be cool, or annoying without proper art direction. It’s top-down like old-school GTA, which presents an interesting perspective. Hopefully, the bird’s-eye distance don’t detach us too much from the dirty, because when dirty happens, I want to get splattered on the face.
The game’s objective is to get you as close to real survival mode as possible. You have to eat, drink, sleep. Sleep alone could present a challenge (I hope!). How do you sleep safely in a prison? Not a lot of space, packed with felons hungry enough to eat you.
The most intriguing survival question is will the game give me the option to eat other people? Terrible, I know. But the game is supposed to be dirty. And you know what, I know it’s just a game, but I like games that make me ask those dirty questions about life and existence.
So, let’s make this happen, fund Hellcrest, and let’s get dirty.