Summer Eternal announces ‘incendiary, physics-driven RPG’ Red Rooster for PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 2, and PC
Fight fires, and start fires, to get to the truth.
Summer Eternal, one of the multiple studios founded by former Disco Elysium developers, has announced Red Rooster, an “incendiary, physics-driven RPG.” It will launch first on PC, with plans for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2 versions to follow. A release date was not announced.
Here is the bullet-point summary:
- Play as Redrick Roost, a white-collar inmate thrust into the role of an arson investigator and partnered up with an opiate-dependent mathematician to investigate a mysterious string of arson that all seems to connect to his brother, the city’s fire–chief.
- Explore the fractalized “border archipelago” of the tri-partite city of Arta-Tantor in a political alternate-history setting with a hard science fiction undercurrent.
- “Fight fires to get to the truth about the world. Start fires to get to the truth about yourself.”
- Red Rooster is set in a highly reactive fully physics-driven world of objects you can move, manipulate and burn.
- We’re breaking away from isometric constraints to drop you into a three-dimensional world with dynamic camera movement.
- Red Rooster is being developed in the Unreal Engine, taking advantage of it’s advanced physics simulation capabilities.
The reveal is accompanied by a 500-page physical book titled “Anthology Volume One,” showcasing the game’s concept art, design, and world building. The book will be delivered to “thousands of fans” within 48 hours from today, and the Deluxe Edition ships with a limited edition 10-inch vinyl featuring four tracks from the game’s soundtrack.
Here is an overview of the game, via its official website:
About
A physics-driven RPG.
Red Rooster is an incendiary, physics-driven RPG combining the best of cerebral, worldbuilding-rich RPGs with the genetics of physics-driven immersive sims.
Play as Redrick Roost, a white-collar inmate thrust into the role of an arson investigator and partnered up with an opiate-dependent mathematician to investigate a mysterious string of arson that all seems to connect to his brother, the city’s fire-chief.
Explore the fractalized “border archipelago” of the tri-partite city of Arta-Tantor in a political alternate-history setting with a strong science fiction undercurrent.
- The Goal – The goal of Red Rooster is to advance the role-playing genre by placing the player in an environment as dynamic, reactive and consequential as the protagonist’s rich inner world.
- Our Inspirations – We build on the nonlinear role-playing traditions of Planescape: Torment, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and supplement them with highly interactive, physics-based mechanics from RPG inspirations like Exanima, Larian’s Divinity Engine games, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
- Game Worlds – RPG worlds are often static fields or networks of corridors where sparse scripted engagements with the environment separate violent encounters from occasional conversations in a never-changing world-state. You don’t so much exist in the world as glide on top of it.
- Physicality – With Red Rooster we are harnessing the full power of a modern 3D engine to bring you into a living, breathing city and turn our urban landscapes and in-period interiors into a physics-powered sandbox of objects you can individually move, manipulate—and burn.
Fight Fires to Get to the Truth About the World
Events of Red Rooster take place in an our-world-adjacent magical realism setting.
It’s an all-new fictional world inspired by a fusion of the 1980s sun-drenched Yugoslavian riviera and the Eastern Block, with influences ranging from the Ottoman culture to Scandinavian social-democracies and the colonial Dutch Empire.
This is not the “end of history,” but rather the “beginning of the future” in the tripartite city of Arta-Tantor.
In the last days of the longest summer on record, the city is hosting the 13th triennial Continental Summer Games while the region is ravaged by an unprecedented heatwave, sporadic power-outs and a troubling amount of domestic and wildfires.
Set Fires to Get to the Truth About Yourself
Step into the ankle-monitor-clad boots of Redrick “Rooster” Roost, a white-collar inmate serving a life sentence in a minimum security prison for gross criminal negligence over a highly publicized auto-meditation device fiasco.
A week before your parole hearing, you’re approached by a high-ranking official from a low-profile government agency with a proposal to infiltrate the local fire station run by your brother and identify the serial arsonist suspected to be operating amongst their ranks.
In exchange for your help, you’re promised a blanket pardon for your crimes and a guaranteed return to the society you haven’t been a part of for more than a decade.
Find Your Flock
You don’t have face the flames alone. Join forces with an opiate-dependent mathematician, Dr Astrid Albers, and a nunchaku-wielding truth-activist, the district bus driver Rico. Three’s a company after all.
And you’re gonna need all the company you can get, as the fires you face become increasingly harder to explain and the destructive urges harder to ignore.
Maybe you shouldn’t be alone tonight?
Come Home to Roost
Navigate the flames, the intrigues and the politics of Arta-Tantor as you prepare for the parole hearing, respond to fire incidents, follow the arsonist’s trail and try to blend in with the firefighters of Terminal 9.
Or give in to the seductive whispers of Redrick’s dark alter egos in the bizarre ‘chicken coop’ he has constructed inside his head as you wrangle Redrick’s mind in the signature psychological RPG fashion.
Who are you really when the lights go out?
View the first images at the gallery.
