SKYSHINE’S BEDLAM
UNFORGIVING AND AS HARD AS NAILS, THIS POSTAPOCALYPTIC ROGUELIKE IS A ROAD TRIP THROUGH HELL.
Skyshine’s Bedlam is a turn-based roguelike about taking risks and making hard choices. Everything has a cost. Stopping to speak with travellers will cost fuel, food, and days on the road. Finding out that they’re insane robots will cost my soldiers a dead comrade and days in hospital. Choosing to drive past them would have lost me hundreds of gallons of precious crude oil. The map and the choices made there are
Bedlam’s ruthless balancing act: driving costs fuel; transporting crew costs food; your soldiers have to ght to restock. If you run out of anything essential, the expedition is over. The more days tick by, the more dangerous the wastes become.
There’s a second, less successful half to Bedlam. Every ght that breaks out on the map screen is played out on an isometric grid. Casualties are to be expected, and that’s where Bedlam runs into the most trouble. I found it so completely impossible to escape from a battle unharmed – even when I enjoyed a total victory – that empty barracks doomed my expedition more often than any other cause. Bedlam is a game of warring incentives: explore opportunities for supplies at the expense of a dwindling roster of doomed young people.
XCOM also features permadeath, and also thrives on the sense of danger that accompanies every conflict, but no matter how bad things get, there are always more recruits. The worldwide XCOM project doesn’t end because of an unlucky grenade throw. In Bedlam, dead soldiers end the journey. For me, this is where the game crossed the line from enjoyably brutal to stressful frustration.