Some of the journalists had the opportunity to play Judas by Ghost Story Games. This project is led by gamedesigner Ken Levine, known for the BioShock game.
The game Judas resembles BioShock in many ways. It’s a story-driven single-player game in which you’ll have to rely on a gun in one hand and supernatural powers in the other. The player will be accompanied by deeply intricate characters. This time, the story will be much more responsive to the player’s actions. It will be full of rivalry between three characters competing for the support and attention of the protagonist.
Levine makes it clear that this is actually the realization of the «story Lego» concept he spoke about 10 years ago. The hand-crafted narrative fragments are assembled into a single whole by procedural means. This will give the impression of a coherent narrative for one player, but it will be different for different players.
Each time a character «dies,» is reprinted. This also makes it possible to change aspects of the character, similar to many of the best roguelike games. But Levin doesn’t want to be pigeonholed into any particular genre.
«We are not trying to create a first-person shooter. We’re not trying to create a roguelite. We’re not trying to create a strategy game,» says Levin.
Judas has elements of these genres, but the developers didn’t try to fit the game into any specific framework.
Levine says some of his «favorite single-player games» include XCOM and Civilization. They’re built in an actual modular way, and they don’t have a separate narrative like we do, Levin says.
«But I drew a lot of inspiration from those games because their map is created at runtime, and our maps are basically created or composed of individual elements at runtime. The ship changes every time you die and come back, the layout of the ship might be different. And so we took a lot of inspiration from these types of single player games. But no one has ever translated that into a story,» Levin says.
Judas is expected to be released in March 2025.