How well would you cope if you suddenly found yourself in a videogame world? I suspect I’d quickly go insane from invisible walls and following people around, but this is a question that RedBedlam and author Christopher Brookmyre are apparently trying to answer with Bedlam.
Described as an “ambitious, original first-person shooter”, Bedlam apparently visits a variety of genres from arcade platformers to modern RTS titles. You play as Some Guy who finds himself in a videogame world – not as the hero, but as a piece of expendable cannon fodder. As he tries to figure out what happened and how he’s going to get out, he’s apparently pursued by a shadowy organisation called Integrity who want to get rid of him. This is apparently the same plot as in Brookmyre’s book of the same name, and the game apparently mirrors those events.
Bedlam (the game) is due out in summer 2014, and the developer/author pairing apparently have another two novel/game tie-ins planned. For what it’s worth, RedBedlam’s past mostly seems to be made up of Unity and Flash-based MMOs and virtual spaces. It’ll be interesting to see how they make the leap to the FPS, though I can’t say I’m currently all that optimistic.
Five screens below if you fancy a look at some of the different environments on offer.
