Minor Key Games, developers of Lovecraftian procedural stealth roguelike Eldritch , are making another game. In and of itself, that's not exactly news—I've found that game developers will often make more than one—but when that game is a "political thriller stealth" title featuring heavy use of the word 'neon', they have succeeded in grabbing my attention. Neon Struct —formerly known by its much cooler, much less marketable title Die Augen der Welt—ditches procedural generation for handmade levels, like what people used to make before they put their faith in the goddamned machines.
There aren't too many details floating around right now, but Minor Key—AKA brothers David and J. Kyle Pittman—are hoping for Neon Struct to be finished early next year. As for what the game entails, we can expect around 25 stealthy, hacky "handcrafted" levels. Here's a paragraph from the devlog that had me nodding more emphatically than usual:
"NEON STRUCT is an adventure story, set in an alternate history world with a deliberately 1980s sci-fi vibe. (“2015 as envisioned in 1985″ was how I described it at inception.) It has something to say, but it needs to be entertaining as well. It does not need to take itself too seriously, but it does need to depict the subject matter in an internally consistent way. And because it's a video game, it has to harmonize with the gamut of player behavior."
As Rock, Paper, Shotgun note—Thanks RPS !—a couple of levels, including a sewer one, were recently cut from the game, in part because it was "a grimy sewer level of the kind we've seen in hundreds of games before". So that's encouraging. I've one handy rule when it comes to sewer levels: unless your game stars some manner of ninja turtle, cut it out.
Here's another image. I could really go for some noodles right about now.
