Uppercut Games, consisting of veterans from 2K Australia and Irrational Games who worked on titles like BioShock, among others, have officially unveiled City of Brass. The new IP is a new first-person rogue-lite that places players in the role of a thief armed with a scimitar and a whip that must fight, trick, trap, and maneuver their way through the game’s titular city.
In City of Brass, players will be able to use their whip in a variety of ways including disarm, trip, or stun enemies as well as swing over pitfalls, grab objects, and break through weak barricades. The City of Brass will also feature a procedurally generated world filled with an array of traps and environmental challenges, treasure to collect, and foes to defeat.
City of Brass Lead Designer Ed Norman explained:
Developing a game with multiple, interacting systems that players can freely combine feels like a return to our roots, drawing on our experiences working on BioShock and many of our other favorites. Players must learn how to use the traps to kill their foes, and even turn enemies against each another. You’ll perish in the City of Brass – often, and quite horribly – but as your skills improve and you discover new ways to cheat death, you’ll return to fight another day.
Here’s an overview of some of the game’s features:
- Collect treasure to increase your score, plunder chests for weapon and armor upgrades or powerful relics – but make it to the exit in time or face death by dervish…
- Incarcerated within the city, and most are friendly… Some will barter gear, upgrades, secrets, unlocks or protections in return for loot. Use one of three wishes to unlock a powerful benefit, or for a king’s ransom, buy a genie’s freedom in return for help in the final battle.
- When your sword just isn’t enough, get creative: smash your enemies with explosive vases, blind them with a brick to the face, or force them into traps.
- The city is filled with wretched spirits of all flavors, all with unique behaviors, all with the singular character defect that they want to kill you.
- The algorithms that create each level are tweaked to generate a logically laid out cityscape of interconnected chambers, courtyards and corridors.
- The rhythmic interplay of blade and lash has been carefully tuned along with sprinting, crouching, sliding, leaping and vaulting to give a fluid, balanced and natural feel to the movement and melee.
- For the ultimate test, experienced players can encumber themselves with Divine Burdens, global modifiers that change enemy abilities, spawn behaviors or multiply environmental hazards.
- No two playthroughs are ever the same: play, die, and play again, each time using what you’ve learned to get further. Are you tenacious enough to reach the heart of the City of Brass?
City of Brass is first heading to PC this fall 2017 but will also be coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2018.
