[promo title=”Indie stealth-survival game Sir, You Are Being Hunted has all the makings of a cultural classic”][/promo]
It has tweed-clad aristocratic robots hunting you through marshes, woods and dilapidated outposts of civilisation – which is simultaneously hilarious and sinister – but it also possesses a clarity of execution. It’s a deep experience, free from the triple-A constraints of looking drop-dead realistic or heavily stylised.
The developers at Big Robot have put all of their efforts into how Sir, You Are Being Hunted plays. When I completed my first run-through a few months ago, back when the game was still in alpha, it was clear even then that there was a degree of consistency. This was a game that was all about stealth; the most extreme, punishing stealth where players could not retreat to the comforting safety of quicksaving and quickloading. Even the locations at which I could save were potentially hazardous, with the aforementioned robot creatures encroaching on what is normally considered sacred player space.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a scavenger hunt for objects, food, tools and weapons players will need to survive.
Every new game sets players up with five randomly generated islands. Four of those islands’ environments can be chosen by the player. Sir/Madam can also select a ‘class’ of character (Officer, Chef and Aristocrat to name a couple) who may or may not begin with certain items in their inventory to make things easier or tougher. A very brief tutorial follows where the bare essentials are explained, then it’s more or less left up to the player on where to go and what to do.
Lessons will be learned very quickly indeed. Just because you happen to find a shotgun with a couple of shells doesn’t mean you’re able to take on an army of automatons. In fact, should you alert any more than three of the blighters you will have a tough time surviving their wrath. These are not the hesitant grunts from Titanfall you’re dealing with; their shotguns pack one hell of a punch.
Surviving in Sir, You Are Being Hunted means keeping your character healthy and well-fed. If they are mortally wounded you will need bandages to patch them up and stop the bleeding. If they are hungry they will not regain health; if they are starving they will die.
Completing the game requires you to obtain ‘mysterious fragments’ from smoking sites dotted around the archipelago and return them to the central island. These sites are almost always guarded by a number of robotic huntsmen. Similarly, the villages and rural houses where you scavenge supplies from are routinely patrolled.
Players’ actions are leveraged by constant needs rather than their desires to cause in-game havoc: to remain hidden, to eat and to find all the mysterious fragments.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted delivers a palpable thrill with every encounter. It’s a game that dares you to press onward and kicks you down repeatedly for making mistakes, until you’re a hardened stealth veteran glaring through the undergrowth and planning your next move.
It is very much for gamers who go for atmosphere and suspense over fast-paced action; as such it carries a long play time attached to each game (my first run-through took over twelve hours). Stealth nuts will love it. The kind of gamers who enjoy Day Z and Rust will feel right at home, as long as they’re happy to trade zombies and human-controlled players for robots.
Sir, You Are Being Hunted (ver. 1.0) is now available on Steam.