Fancy a 2D side-scrolling LIMBO-like game that casts you as an African warrior who takes on gun-toting enemies?
Crocopede (also known as Lukas De Kock) over on the MakeGamesSA forum believes you would, and has spent the last three months working on just such a game.
His game sees the player taking on what look like poachers (but who could just as easily be soldiers) in a distinctly African setting, and players must kick and spear them all to death or summon leopards, rhinos and elephants to maul them. There are secret areas to be discovered and fireflies and fruit to be collected, too, along with a stealth element and some jumping puzzles.
It’s currently called Xoi San, a play on Khoisan which we all know to be two groups of Southern African people; Xoi San is actually a Chinese dish so the title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The name will probably change, though, as Crocopede has received feedback via the MakeGamesSA forum that questions casting what appears to be a Khoisan warrior in the lead role when the Khoisan people are, in fact, quite peaceful.
Still, as was pointed out in the office, if Machine Games can make a game about a Jewish soldier mowing down Nazis in alternate-history 1960, there is a bit of leeway to be granted to a South African developer making a game about a violent Khoisan warrior. Of course, that’s just one opinion. The prevailing opinion in the office is that while there’s no good argument for saying one group of people should be protected from cartoonish portrayal in a game while others (any ethnic group in GTA) aren’t, there’s no reason to put people’s backs up unnecessarily.
Fortunately the warrior in question is represented as a silhouette and thus could represent any of a number of African peoples, so perhaps a name-change is all that’s needed to solve that particular problem. More importantly, the whole game looks genuinely beautiful.
De Kock released a video showing off how the game plays, and we’re very impressed by what we saw. Not only does the game look beautifully stylised with its silhouetted characters and gorgeous African sunset background, but it ends with the player riding a rhino into battle! Check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skkJ2_5ir2w
Xoi San is currently on Steam’s Greenlight programme; that basically means it needs lots and lots of votes from gamers who would be interested in buying it to make it onto the distribution platform. It’s currently ranked #75, so it seems to be getting there slowly but surely.
To see it in action for yourself, download the PC beta from this link. De Kock says a Mac beta will follow soon.
If Xoi San looks like something you might enjoy, head over to Steam Greenlight now and show your support.
[Source, Image – MakeGamesSA Forum]
