From the multitude of new games that unveiled at PAX East, comes one that is a little different than most. Upsilon Circuit is a game currently in development with Robot Loves Kitty, and features two teams of four players randomly chosen facing off against each other in both an over-world and various dungeons. Each team’s goal is to search out the Dream Tech Crystals. Seems simple, right?
Not exactly. The game has several big features which deviate from a typical game experience. The first of these? Experience points. Players get EXP for killing monsters or for collecting treasures, just like in a normal game. But they don’t get to keep it. Instead, all player-earned EXP goes to the audience. The audience can then use those experience points however they decide, whether it be to help a player, save one, or end someone’s game. The game’s webpage describes the audience members as “part dungeon master, part strategist, and part judge and jury”.
That’s another new feature of the game as well. The creators of Upsilon Circuit designed the game to work with all sorts of viewing services like Twitch in order to allow the world to watch as players compete. As one player dies in the game, the next is selected from the audience and brought into the game. In addition, audience members can purchase monsters or potions with real money, choosing at will which player gets help and which player dies.
This audience participation throws an even bigger wrench into the mix when you consider what people are calling the most dramatic twist of the game: players only get one life.
Once you die in Upsilon Circuit, that’s it. No respawns, no rejoining a different session, no exceptions. Period. Once a player dies, they can never play the game again. And while the creators of the game acknowledge that there will be people who die in seconds, they also believe that there will be people who last for months in the game, which will only run for a few hours every day. Somewhat reminiscent of Hunger Games, their goal is to create celebrities within the game, with audience members keeping their favorite players alive and watching them day after day as they struggle to survive in the game.
There is no release date for Upsilon Circuit yet as the game is still in early development, but the creators say that once it is released, they only intend to keep it live for a year before shutting the game down.
Check out some of the prototype gameplay below.
So, what do you think? Will you play Upsilon Circuit once it comes out? More importantly, will you watch it? Let us know in the comments down below!
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.upsiloncircuit.com/” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Upsilon Circuit[/button][button type=”link” link=”http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/video-game-dead-means-dead-180956814/” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Smithsonian[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
