After their success with their tough as nails roguelike, Risk of Rain, the team over at Hopoo Games have just announced their new game, titled Deadbolt. In this stealth action hybrid, you take control of a skull faced reaper of souls, tasked with following the orders of a talking fireplace to clean up an undead uprising. It sounded fairly generic until the talking fireplace got involved. Taking inspiration from other indie titles like Gunpoint and Hotline Miami, you must navigate over 30 levels and clean up the horde of undead using whatever weapon you deem appropriate, and via whatever entry point you feel suits the situation. You could run in with a scythe and hack everyone to pieces, or you could sneak up through the bog and explode a poor zombie while he is taking a dump. There is a fair amount of variety when it comes to claiming souls but be warned, you can only take one hit before your own soul is extinguished so be meticulous in your plan of attack.
Based on the trailer, it is tactical enough for me to enjoy planning my exact route to kill everyone inside while also being just silly enough to have me running through an apartment block with a scythe, slicing undead gangsters to pieces. From the trailer, Hopoo have been able to create that moody, noir atmosphere that you’d see in something like Gunpoint, yet blend it with elements of the occult. Chris Christodoulou did such a fantastic job establishing atmosphere with Risk of Rain’s OST and based on the short song playing in the Deadbolt trailer, it seems like he’ll work his magic a second time. Deadbolt is set to release in the first quarter of 2016 but if you want to play a short demo of the game, you can go to the Deadbolt itch.io page and download a small chunk of the game.
