
Aug
Sir, You Are Being Hunted Developers Announce The Signal From Tölva
02 Aug, 2016
Announced for an early 2017 release, The Signal From Tölva is a first-person shooter with a bent for exploration and territorial warfare. Also, robots.
British studio Big Robot released Sir, You Are Being Hunted in 2014, making it possibly the most British video game of the decade. Now they’re back, and they’ve brought back first-person exploration and robots, but with a decidedly less silly theme going on this time around. The Signal From Tölva swaps the procedural generation for a hand-crafted world, and the semi-survival horror for straight-up combat. Also, Wiktionary tells me that Tölva means ‘computer’ in Icelandic. Thanks, Wiktionary!
At a time when the galaxy is home to mostly robots, a mysterious something is found on Tölva. The player character, looking for the source of a signal, hijacks a drone and proceeds to uncover the mystery behind it all. Along the way, the player character (who is presumably a robot), must recruit robots and fight for territory against the enemy: an artificial intelligence. If we keep antagonising AIs in our video games, I feel fairly certain the first self-aware AI in the world is absolutely going to be intent on wiping us out.
The game is described as “an ode to classic pulp science fiction”, and the graphics certainly do justice to that. The stylised art of the game’s world has been designed by Ian McQue, who has previously worked on Max Payne 3 and Grand Theft Auto V. The game appears to have a day-and-night cycle of some sort, but it clearly shines brightest at day, with some screenshots that look outright like paintings.
The Signal From Tölva (official website) will release for Windows and Mac some time in early 2017. If you’d enjoy the developer’s previous efforts at open-world robot survival simulations, consider checking out Sir, You Are Being Hunted on Steam.