The Red Strings Club is the next game from Deconstructeam—the studio behind 2014's unorthodox indie point-and-click adventure Gods Will Be Watching. Billed as a "cyberpunk narrative experience about fate and happiness" that features "extensive use of pottery, bartending and impersonating people on the phone to take down a corporate conspiracy", it sounds a wee bit out there. It's also now got a launch date: January 22.
Here's the reveal trailer that arrived last October:
Similar to its forerunner, The Red Strings Club is set into the future with the player rebelling against dubious life-affecting technology. Here, Supercontinent Ltd are pedaling the Social Psyche Welfare—a system designed to eliminate depression. Before long, you uncover a "mysterious corporate program" within, and are forced to consider the meaning of happiness.
As you might have spied, Jody wrote about The Red Strings Club's underdogs and weirdos earlier this week. Here's an excerpt from his impressions:
When you're playing a transhumanist implant robot it's about matching upgrades to clients, figuring out whether enhancing someone's sex appeal or rendering them immune to the effect of internet comments will fix their problems. Once you've chosen an upgrade you spin up the lathe, put on a tune, and use the mouse to carve it out of biomatter.
It's an unusual way of representing the process and honestly a bit fiddly, but trying to second guess which modification will actually solve humans' ridiculous problems is darkly funny. I could give this person everything they desire, or I could just block the part of their brain that makes them desire things. Tough choice.
The Red Strings Club is due January 22, 2018. More information can be gleaned from the game's Steam page.
