You may remember Bedlam from the trailer I posted just before this year’s E3. It had this great art style that I can only describe as 2000 AD inspired, but more in line with the 80’s than present day. The 80’s is a good place to start with Bedlam as it’s clearly a little inspired by Mad Max, which was actually the creator’s goals. To really sum it up it’s like Oregon Trail meets Mad Max. Something that really stood out to me as I played or watched several games being played is that creators really want players to play their game at length. They don’t want you to get bored and that’s something that the creators of Bedlam were very aware of. Each time you start a game a map is generated and the four different fractions that control the land are reshuffled making for a different experience each time. Your goal as the player is to travel from one end of the map to the other end in the hope of finding a haven of sorts in the post-apocalyptic world.
To do this you’ll need resources and a crew that will help you. After picking your own fraction you’ll go off in a giant bus looking thing that is actually housing a lot more than it looks. To reach different points on the map you’ll need to use resources and if you run out of rescores then you lose the game and basically die. I died. That’s the part that’s very much like Oregon Trail in which you need to make smart choices and use resources in a wise way in order to continue towards the end.
That’s all one part of it, but as I said the map is spread out with different fractions. Some will be friendly, most will be hostile and that’s when the battle system comes into play. As it was explained to me the different characters in your group are like chess pieces meaning they all have their unique movements. You then move your character to line up kill shots against whoever is attacking you. If you’re close enough, you can also melee. Since everyone is a sprite and using guns in this post-apocalyptic world there’s a lot of great sprite deaths.
Your team is made up of people with different roles; for instance, a sniper, heavy weapons and the rest of your typical video game gun classes. As they do better though you’ll level them up and pick up Elites. Elites are rarer characters and you’ll need to complete a side quest to unlock them, usually by finding an item that belongs to them. The Elites make the battles easy because they’re basically your ringer which is fun and helpful.
Overall I don’t know if I would spend a huge amount of time with the game personally because there was almost too much to do. I know that’s a weird complaint, but then it’s not really a complaint. I just don’t know if I would be able to invest the proper amount of time into the game in order to succeed with it, but if I could I would probably play the hell out of it. There’s little nuances for every type of gamer and really the fact that you can do so much should be commended for those that have the time.
I really enjoyed the art style and it hooked me on the game in a big way. I wish I could say it reminded me of this or that artist, but it really didn’t. It seemed more like a familiar well-worn style of art, but I really enjoyed it.
Bedlam is releasing soon on Steam so if you like the combination of gameplay and worlds then you should definitely check it out. Oh and don’t think that the creator’s just saw the new Mad Max film and decided to make a game, this is something they’ve wanted to make since the original films were popular which just goes to show that everything comes back around again.