If you miss the days of classic, old-school Fallout, some of the best classic PC games in their isometric RPG format, then we’ve got great news for you. New Blood Interactive, the developer group behind throwback FPS Dusk and other classic Fallout games, is creating a retro-futuristic title that draws heavily from the Fallout series’ early days. The studio head just shared some new gameplay footage.
Dave Oshry takes the regular ‘Screenshot Saturday’ hashtag, used by many game developers to show their progress on upcoming games, as an opportunity to show off the team’s work towards its goal of creating “a living, breathing, retro-futuristic (but sometimes seedy) world for NB RPG,” the as-yet-untitled project.
“That means a lot of flying cars,” Oshry says. We get a glimpse of a very stylish, wide silver car floating outside what appears to be a cinema featuring nods to Blade Runner and New Blood’s crime noir FPS game Fallen Aces. He also shows us a glimpse at tall buildings by cutting away the interiors to reveal the scale of the structures.
We get to see lip sync tests and a Pip-Boy style UI that is used for the talking head conversations that will be extremely familiar to those of you who’ve played the old Fallout games. The character models look delightfully detailed, featuring a figure wearing a rather bizarre headset that strikes a balance somewhere between ‘biometric scanner’ and ‘VR headset.’
There’s also models and animation tests for a range of weapons, from familiar faces such as an M16, revolver, and Half-Life favourite the crowbar, to futuristic, almost alien-looking blasters that hold bubbling vials of green liquid and crackle with energy when fired. Finally, we get to see some journal concepts, with empty pages ready to be filled out with all the notes and sketches you’ll make as you do your detective work.
Alexander has been really pushing to ensure that we have a living, breathing, retrofuturistic world for NB RPG. It means lots of flying cars.#ScreenshotSaturday #GameDev pic.twitter.com/gMUiQhVQ1Y
— Dave @ MORTIS (@DaveOshry) January 21, 2023
This new RPG game is sure to get retro fans a bit hot under the collar. It features Adam Lacko (who created Project Van Buren, an isometric RPG that was originally intended to be Fallout 3), Alexander Berezin (who created extensive mod Fallout: Sonora), and Mark Morgan (whose soundtracks still influence the scores of the new entries).
Oshry concludes his update by saying, “Follow me for more occasional random updates on my dream game that we may or may not ever finish,” adding a little smiley face at the end. We certainly hope that it does make it to completion, because everything we’ve seen so far only makes us eager for more tantalising tidbits.
For more great indie games, you can check out these other top PC titles. You can also get great deals on older entries like Fallout 76 through the Steam base building sales. This sale focuses on the art of creating.