Almost Time to Smash Things up in Virtue and a Sledgehammer
Forget therapy. Virtue and a Sledgehammer has a much more destructive solution for dealing with your past: grab a giant hammer and start smashing.
Deconstructeam, the studio behind The Red Strings Club and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, has teamed up with Selkie Harbour and publisher Devolver Digital to bring this unusual narrative experience to PC on October 27. The game will cost $14.99.
Virtue and a Sledgehammer drops players into the town where they grew up, only to find it overrun by the android ghosts of its digitized residents. What starts as a return home quickly turns into a bizarre journey through memories, family history, and unresolved pain.
Players can swing their sledgehammer through mechanical human facsimiles and tear down the buildings around them. Every destroyed structure exposes more of the town’s past. This gives players a chance to confront the memories and experiences they left behind.
The destruction is only one part of the experience, though. Cinematic interactive-fiction sequences delve into the protagonist’s fears, desires, and family relationships. As well as the complicated traditions and values that shaped their life. But will smashing everything actually provide the catharsis the protagonist is looking for? Or will it only make those old wounds harder to ignore?
With its strange premise, emotional storytelling, and literal approach to destroying the past, Virtue and a Sledgehammer is shaping up to be one very unique narrative adventure. We’ll find out just how therapeutic a sledgehammer can be when it launches on October 27.