Red Redemption’s “Fate of the World” new game title for release in 3rd Quarter 2010 Save the world or burn it down

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 30th, 2010, Oxford, England – Red Redemption Ltd finally announces that “Fate of the World” will be the title of its latest game currently scheduled for release in the 3rd Quarter of 2010. “Fate of the World” is a nail biting set of global warming scenarios covering 200 years of Earth’s existence. At the heart of the game are 10 'Masterplans' where the player calls the shots for all mankind including 'Apocalypse' where the gut wrenching goal is to raise the planet’s temperature a lethal degree; 'Lifeboat' where the goal is to save only the player while abandoning everyone else to whatever catastrophes await them; and 'Utopia' where a player can try to build a perfect society while battling population growth.

'Fate of the World' lets players explore the next two centuries, trying out geoengineering, fusion power, wildlife adaption, and many other brain teasing and sometimes alarming, options. The balancing act of protecting the Earth's resources and climate versus the needs of an ever-growing world population, who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space, creates a challenging videogame containing many surprises.

Red Redemption’s Managing Director, Klaude Thomas, formerly producer of #1 charting 'Battlestations: Midway' for Eidos, is producer of “Fate of the World”. Thomas said 'our original title was "Climate Challenge", which built on the success of our BBC game in 2007, but we wanted the final title to reflect the wider scope of the game and suggest the black humour you sometimes need to face such a scary subject. The environmental apocalypse before us is a terrible and compelling car crash. To stretch that metaphor unforgivably, we sometimes feel we're in the passenger seat. "Fate of the World" puts us back in the driver's seat.'

Based in Oxford, England, indie games company Red Redemption (http://www.red-redemption.com) makes games that provoke and challenge. "Fate of the World" is a PC & Mac title being released in Q3 2010.

February Round Up

It has been another busy month for us here. We completed core gameplay and began work on the final stages of production, so rather than focus in on one particular area I'd like to give a quick overview of where we are at:

Screenshots:
We were able to release some of the first shots from the pre-Alpha version of the game. These give a good sense of where the game is now, but expect lots of dramatic developments over the next few months as we focus in on the user experience. I've posted up two technical shots from our globe engine and also a view of the pre-Alpha user interface. You will probably notice the hand of cards along the bottom, that is one element that has made it from the original BBC Climate Challenge to the current game, but this is so much bigger a game that I look forward to investigating the key areas over the next few months with posts to this blog.

Radio:
I was interviewed on the Jo Thoenes show and Bill Heine shows on BBC Radio Oxford and on the Sunday Morning Roast on Jack FM. It was an interesting experience and good to see what questions the presenters had about the game. Key themes that came up were population control, the fact you get to control the whole planet for two hundred years and that we don't stop you trying to break the world if you want. Actually we encourage it :D

Press:
We snuck out a small release to announce that Dr Myles Allen had provided the climate model in the game, it got picked up by the Nature Blog, Develop magazine and Guardian. The feedback was good and useful and helped us shape our final thinking on...

Final Game Title:
We will soon be announcing the final headline title for Climate Challenge, which is exciting. We have to come up with a name that defines a game that in many ways will be unique. We love 'Climate Challenge', but it doesn't really portray the breadth of actions the player can take - you can save the world, destroy it, escape to mars, build eco cities, tackle geo-engineering, etc. We want something that captures the spirit of the game!

Development:
Over the last few weeks we considered each game feature against value to players and work to complete, and made a shortlist of those we want to finish for the launch version of the game. Now that we have done that, we have a solid picture of what we want to accomplish and are working steadily toward our alpha version. What we are working on most is presentation, response, and reward for players, and our 'instantiation' (which is where the gameplay will become evident instead of being seen only in potential in the underlying system).