The Game Developer’s Conference (GDC for short) is a great event to go to in order to see games that are heading our way in both the near future as well as projects currently being worked on that won’t be coming out for awhile. Redux Ark by Hyper Games falls into the latter category as it is still in early development.
Even though Redux Ark is in early development, the game looks quite good. This game is all about surviving on a new hostile world and no, there are no zombies in this survival game. Redux Ark takes place in the future, the year being 2239, and due to the last bee on Earth dying in 2039 a rather devastating and fatal chain of events has happened. Only the rich were able to evacuate Earth and eventually, after floating around in space for awhile, they discovered Earth’s twin planet which was named Gemina.
Now that life on Earth is gone aside from the wealthy, an attempt to repopulate Earth with live is made with the building of Redux Ark, a spaceship that will travel to Gemina in order to collect animals, plant life, and other organic matter before bringing it back to Earth in order to attempt to repopulate the planet with life. Unfortunately, when the ship and its crew reached Gemina, they lost control and crashed onto the planet with only three people surviving – a Scientist, a Pathfinder, and a Soldier. Parts of the ship scattered across the planet when the ship crashed and these parts are needed to get the ship back into working order.
Your goal is to not only collect animals, plant life and the organic matter that you originally came to Gemina to collect, but to also find the parts of the ship that were scattered around when you crashed in order to get back to Earth if humanity has any chance of survival. You will be controlling one of the three characters that survived at any given time, searching the area around you for the items you need as well as the ship parts. At times you will have to defend yourself against Gemina’s native creatures and hostile plant life, while other times you will be bringing back those in order to breed them.
Even though Gemina is Earth’s twin planet the atmosphere is different. Players will need to sustain a constant amount of electricity in order to power a device that allows you to breath while outside on the planet’s surface. Other features in this game also require power and as your supply begins to drop, you will lose the functionality of these features such as the mini map and night light. If you run out of power you will need to return to the ship in order to recharge your supply. Failing to do so will result in you eventually dying. Each time you return to your ship, your game progress is also saved. You will be able to build charging stations that you can use in order to travel further away from your ship without dying.
Each class of character has their own set of unique abilities (and weaknesses) you will need to utilize if you plan to be successful. You will only be able to switch between each character when you are back at your ship, so you will need to plan your travels ahead of time. The solider is naturally the best fighter of the three, the pathfinder is better at locating specific creatures, and the scientist knows more about plants, medicine, and the more scientific stuff.
Gameplay is pretty straightforward. You will be able to tap on the screen to make your character move to that location. You have a limited amount of inventory space available to use so you will have to plan on what you want to take back to the ship each time you travel out and you will have to memorize where the items are that you left behind. Attacking is done by tapping on a creature in order to shoot it. Visually, the game is rendered with 3D visuals in a rather nice art style as well. Even though our hands-on was with an early alpha build of the game, it was quite good looking and fun to play even in the limited capacity that we had.
Redux Ark is still in the early stages of development and Hyper Games told us that they are planning to release the game sometime in 2016. If it gets finished before that, we should see it released onto Google Play this year. Check out some official prototype gameplay in the video below. We will post updates about Redux Ark as more details are released in the future. No word on pricing as of yet.
