Ghoul Britannia set to rise on Early Access early next month

Written by Jack Allin — September 12, 2019 at 13:13

The dangers of the UK separating from the EU thanks to its contentious Brexit vote are widely known, but one consequence flying under the radar is... a zombie apocalypse? Better add that one to the top of the list, at least according to Ghoul Britannia: Land of Hope and Gorey, a satirical point-and-click indie adventure coming to Early Access next month.

Following Britain's "disastrous departure from the European Union," the economy begins failing badly so the government even more disastrously devises an "ingenious plan to exploit the dead and invite families to sell their deceased loved ones into state servitude" in order to bolster the depleted workforce. Under this strategy, the reanimated "Extended Labor Units" are "tasked with menial labor" in jobs that "most Britons find undesirable." Predictably, all hell breaks loose (more or less literally) when "the device controlling the ELUs fails, causing a nationwide plague of the undead." Against this backdrop, a young woman named Hope Andrews must now brave the outbreak if she's to be reunited with her family. 

While that may sound like the premise for a tense survival horror, Ghoul Britannia promises a "bloodcurdling tale" of a different kind: one of "friendship and discovery infected with black humor and political commentary wrapped up in a classic point-and-click adventure experience." Presented from an isometric perspective with hand-painted 2D backgrounds and "lively" 3D characters, the game is designed to be reminiscent of the genre classics with its "story-driven gameplay and puzzles to solve." It's not a solitary journey either, as young Hope joins forces with Dave Gorey, a "former ELU spokesperson turned sentient zombie, who offers help in Hope’s quest as he tries to discover how the theoretically impossible disaster occurred." Mind you, if he's to "atone for his role in the crisis," he'll need to "suppress his cravings for brains" along the way.

Indie developers Binary Space have plenty of experience with zombies, having previously created Class 3 Outbreak and Zombie Outbreak Simulator, while writer Jonathan L. Howard is no stranger to adventure games, having co-written Revolution's classic Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. Between them they plan to release the first five chapters of Ghoul Britannia: Land of Hope and Gorey on Windows and Mac through Steam Early Access on October 9th, with the remaining five chapters to follow in early 2020.