A new game project!

So I've started working on a new game. It's called Biomechanoid Repair Shop, and it's basically Papers Please meets David Cronenberg. You run a small shop where you repair half-machine creatures.

Repairing biomechanoids is the core of the game - one arrives, you diagnose its ailments, and you fix it. Around this, there are the considerations of your shop: bills to pay, equipment and replacement parts, customers, and so on, as well as a larger plot that will eventually make itself known.

It's a cyberpunk/biopunk game set in a world that looks like the 80s idea of a dystopian near-future. There's hardly any computers, but there's ever more useful biomechanoid devices, from mundane air conditioning lungs to terrifying weapons. And you are one of those shopkeeper side characters in a cyberpunk story, shown in just a scene or two before being gruesomely killed off.

Of course, you don't want to be gruesomely killed off.

This could be you. Blade Runner © Warner Bros., eXistenZ © Miramax Films

I posted a mockup of the game on social media a few weeks ago, and the positive response has convinced me to keep working on the game. And yes, I have to admit here that I was intentionally a bit vague - the picture you see above is a drawing, not a screenshot of a live game. I didn't want people to treat it as a mere concept because I didn't want them to go too easy on it.

I have since created a prototype, which doesn't look quite as nice as the mockup, but I do think you can see how the one can turn into the other.

It has intentionally basic graphics, because I wanted to check that the core gameplay was engaging, even without the benefit of graphics, sounds, and animations. I showed it at two game testing nights at our local gamedev haunt, the Swiss Game Hub, and confirmed that the gameplay does work.

So over the next few weeks, I want to work on those graphics, sounds, animations, and interactions, because they are very important to the game. That feeling of being in your workshop, carefully taking apart a thing of metal and flesh. And I'll be posting about those efforts on here, which will hopefully be of interest.

What else? I expect development to take about two years, maybe faster if things go smoothly. It'll be available for at least Windows and Linux. No idea on translations yet. There will eventually be a Steam page, but it's not up yet, so for now you can sign up to the mailing list if you like.