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Fallout-style isometric RPG wows with retro-futuristic flying cars

New Blood’s retro-futuristic, Fallout-style isometric RPG game is shaping up to be special, as the studio shows flying cars, weapons, and NPC conversations.

New Blood's untitled isometric RPG - a character appears on a screen, wearing a mysterious retro-futuristic headset

If you miss the days of classic, old-school Fallout, some of the best classic PC games in their isometric RPG format, then we’ve got great news for you. New Blood Interactive, the developer collective behind such games as throwback FPS Dusk, is making a retro-futuristic game drawing heavy inspiration from the early days of the Fallout series, and the studio head has just shared some exciting new gameplay footage of it in action.

Dave Oshry takes the regular ‘Screenshot Saturday’ hashtag, used by many game developers to show their progress on upcoming games, as an opportunity to show off the team’s work towards its goal of creating “a living, breathing, retro-futuristic (but sometimes seedy) world for NB RPG,” the as-yet-untitled project.

“That means a lot of flying cars,” Oshry says. We get a glimpse of a very stylish, wide silver car floating outside what appears to be a cinema featuring nods to Blade Runner and New Blood’s crime noir FPS game Fallen Aces. He also gives a look at some tall buildings, cutting away to show the insides before revealing the full scale that they climb to.

We get to see lip sync tests and a Pip-Boy style UI that is used for the talking head conversations that will be extremely familiar to those of you who’ve played the old Fallout games. The character models look delightfully detailed, featuring a figure wearing a rather bizarre headset that strikes a balance somewhere between ‘biometric scanner’ and ‘VR headset.’

There’s also models and animation tests for a range of weapons, from familiar faces such as an M16, revolver, and Half-Life favourite the crowbar, to futuristic, almost alien-looking blasters that hold bubbling vials of green liquid and crackle with energy when fired. Finally, we get to see some journal concepts, with empty pages ready to be filled out with all the notes and sketches you’ll make as you do your detective work.

The team behind this new RPG game should certainly get fans of such retro classics a little hot under the collar. It features Adam Lacko, who created Project Van Buren (a recreation of the isometric RPG originally planned to become Fallout 3), Alexander Berezin, who created the artwork for extensive mod project Fallout: Sonora, and composer Mark Morgan, whose soundtracks for the first two Fallout games still influence the scores for the modern entries.

Oshry concludes his update by saying, “Follow me for more occasional random updates on my dream game that we may or may not ever finish,” adding a little smiley face at the end. We certainly hope that it does make it to completion, because everything we’ve seen so far only makes us eager for more tantalising tidbits.

In the meantime, check out more of the best indie games on PC for other great creations that might have passed you by. Meanwhile, a Steam base building sale includes great deals on some of the more modern entries including Fallout 76 that showcase the craft of creation.