Sir, You Are Being Hunted has been flushed out of hiding; here’s our Sir, You Are Being Hunted review.
A five minute chunk of Sir, You Are Being Hunted footage has dropped on the internet and unlike the previous clips from the game, it shows a longer, more detailed look at the game’s overlapping systems. No montage going on in this video, no siree.
Lifted from designer James Carey’s Youtube chanel:
The footage shows off the foliage cover system, man traps, using sound to lure AI machines, the use of birds as a distraction, and the failure of the use of birds as a distraction. It’s compelling stuff.
Previously, what we’ve seen of the game has usually been presented in montages. Which, while conveying action, didn’t get across the way that the game is made of many overlapping systems. We’ve been told that you’ll be fleeing from enemies more than fighting them, avoiding hunting packs rather than confronting them, and using visibility and sound to your advantage, but it’s only in this longer five minute film of the game being played that this has been more evident. And, frankly, it’s looking very good.
There’s a lot which is still placeholder, art and animations are most noticeable, but still the world is unlike most we see in games. Most similar would be something like Dear Esther, in that both are going for the grim English countryside aesthetic, and capturing it well.
One of the weaker parts of the footage, though, was the inventory. It looks fiddly. Both that it’s a box and slot system, meaning you ahve to keep shuffling around items to maximise free space; and, also that you need to open your inventory, select items, and then apply them to the world item you want to effect – in the video this means selecting pliers to disarm a trap. It would be simpler if you could just sue the items from your inventory in context: so, if you’ve got a set of pliers pressing use on a trap disarms it.
Still, these are the sorts of issues that get defended or fixed in an alpha, which is what the pledges are funding so it would be petty to criticise the game for it now.
If you like what you see then help Sir, You Are Being Hunted hit its stretch goals by pledging to its Kickstarter.