Video game about saving town from runaway virus new from Kitchener developer
The team is wrapping up the first draft of the game and say it will be available on game consoles next year
A town deals with a sudden virus spreading, which was transmitted to humans by animals. The goal becomes finding a way to stop the virus.
That's part of the plot of the video game Mayhem in Single Valley: Confessions, created by Brian Cullen and his team at Fluxscopic — a video game development studio based out of Kitchener.
Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the plot may sound familiar to many people. But Cullen, the company's founder and the game's designer, says he began to develop it five years ago, long before the global pandemic.
"We're very careful to not make a parallel," Cullen said. "It just happens to be a game about a virus spreading."
"The pandemic itself is obviously a very serious situation in the real world and our game is humourous and we're not trying to make light of what's going on."
The game also involves radioactive squirrels, a poisoned water supply and a main character dealing with family issues. When it comes to the design, it has a throwback look, a nod to Super Mario of the 1980s.
After years of coming up with this complex online world, Cullen says the small team is wrapping up the first draft of the game.
Their years in development were funded by the Ontario Media Development and Telefilm. Now the U.S. game publisher tinyBuild has bought the intellectual property rights, which has given the team more resources to develop the game, according to Cullen.
Cullen expects the game to be available early next year on video game consoles, PC and possibly Mac. In the meantime, Cullen says people can play the demo online.