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The year is 2069. You are a hacker, caught attempting to break into the Zurich data vaults of the world's largest megacorporation, Trioptimum. Edward Diego, a director on Triop's board, offers you an alternative to a long stretch in the deep freeze (cryo-prison): he needs some in house dirty work for Trioptimum handled discretely, off the books. If you succeed, there's a military grade neural rig in it for you, as well as your freedom.

Diego plans to send you to Pandora Station, an experimental colony funded by Triop on Ganymede, the third moon of Jupiter. Jason Fitzgerald Duke, an interplanetary shipping magnate and space robber baron, established Pandora in partnership with Triop as a new utopia for mankind off world. But Duke has gone rogue and Pandora Station has gone dark. Diego sends you to Pandora smuggled on board the UNN Jack Parsons, the next ship bound for Pandora, with orders to remove Duke from power as discretely as possible.

And then a dirty bomb detonates on the Parsons, awakening you from cryosleep into a situation rapidly going to hell.

CW: Adult language, disturbing imagery and situations, terror, despair, paranoia, extreme pixelated blood and gore.

RetroShock is an action RPG in the vein of System Shock 2, Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite, and Prey (2017) except top down and with (kinda sorta mostly) 16-bit graphics. In its current incarnation it is a System Shock/Bioshock fan game. Shoot plague mutants, deranged medical bots, and malevolent aliens as you attempt to survive the dark and deadly corridors of the doomed starship and eventually, Pandora Station itself. You'll hoard ammo, hack everything, survive environmental hazards like fire, electricity, and radiation, and upgrade your character's stats and skills with Cyber Modules. You'll also install a gross alien parasite in your brain to unlock a vast array of psychic powers. All of this while learning more about Duke's plans for "elevating" the human race, and how you might be able to stop them.

Latest Blog

v0.01 Alpha Release

TheGentlemanLoser
0 post(s)
03/19/2021 06:52 PM
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Hey this is my entry for the Retro Game Jam, March 2021, on Itch.io. CHECK IT OUT ON ITCH HERE! CHECK IT OUT ON RMN HERE!

It's being developed with RPG Maker MV and the Chrono Engine for same allowing for real time combat with projectile physics and hit detection that mostly kind of sort of work. The premise is, what if System Shock 1 had been a SNES game, not a PC game. So the plan is for pretty pixel art and jammin chip tunes underscoring a top-down RPG/shooter hybrid and exemplifying the all-encompassing science-fiction despair/terror that is the 'Shock franchise, where ambitious people make enormous leaps forward in technology that lead to more suffering for everyone! Yay!

RetroShock takes place in a universe where the events of System Shock 1 (and later SS2) happen, it's just set before any of that, in 2069. The events of RetroShock tie into the events of the two real System Shock games, but it isn't a "direct prequel". Think of Retro Shock as the "System Shock 0" that never was.

In terms of the game's style, structure, and themes, it's going to be a bit more like a Bioshock game than than either of the real System Shock games (Prey[ (2017) by Arkane Studios which is essentially System Shock 3 in every way that matters--to me, anyway--was another huge influence).

I eventually want this to develop in the direction of becoming its own thing, a thing that if it gets completed and is any good, I can sell. As I need to explain to literally no one, Intellectual Property is a thing and System Shock isn't mine. The short (maybe VERY short) version released for the jam is more like a free fan game, so it'll have undisguised plot elements, characters, proper nouns, systems and other distinctive features (plus shout-outs and homages) from the 'Shock series, but as I develop the project further, I'll gradually be transforming it into its own thing that I can sell. Retro Shock will almost certainly not be the name of that final version. And explicit references to Tri-Optimum and Edward Diego and Janet Polito and Citadel Station and Shodan and the F-5 Virus and so on won't make it into the final version. (Writing and world building is easy for me: the technical aspects of game design are very much not.)

I have no idea how long the development cycle for the full thing will be, but certainly months if not years. Maybe in the interrim I can get some help from people who have talents that overlap with all the many things I can't do, like art and music.