Robotoki, the developer formed by Robert Bowling, ex-Call of Duty creative strategist, will be using the CryEngine to develop their zombie apocalypse game, Human Element. The studio have also decided to drop support for the Ouya in favour of PC.
“The ambitious narrative and gameplay of Human Element required an innovative set of features in order to achieve our vision,” Bowling told our intern Prez Relise. “CRYENGINE is the perfect fit for us because it delivers so many powerful features straight out of the box such as the physical based shading system and the infinite terrain from segmented worlds to create a massive open world experience but still allow the visual fidelity and detail our players expect from a first person experience from our team.”
Besides being first person we know few details about Robotoki’s game. Apparently it takes place 35 years after a zombie apocalypse. The world’s been ravaged and only a few survivors remain. Your role in Human Element is to rebuild society and the world will change and evolve based on your actions. What’s not clear is how freeform this will be, whether it’s simply a shooter with a branching narrative or something more open, like Epic’s Fortnight.
“The team at Robotoki have earned countless plaudits in the games industry, and their talent is obvious from the amazing work we’ve seen them producing with CRYENGINE already,” said Carl Jones, Business Development Director at Crytek. “We look forward to offering them the same high level of support we promise to all CRYENGINE licensees as they work to turn their ideas into a reality.”
When Human Element was first announced Bowling said the game would be foregrounded with a series of releases for the Ouya console. That plan’s now been dropped, Bowling said on Twitter recently:
@FilmingGrim Cancelled very early on as we shifted focus to our next gen open world version which is being built on CryEngine.
— Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) March 21, 2014
Instead, the release of the PC version has been confirmed for November 2015:
@SamitSarkar PC confirmed for Nov 2015 release, PS4 and Xbox One yet to have a release date. Mobile will follow PC release as secondary.
— Robert Bowling (@fourzerotwo) March 21, 2014
I’m cautiously optimistic about Human Element. While Robotoki is a new studio, Bowling left a very good job at Infinity Ward to found it and begin work on the game. I want to see what was exciting enough for him to up sticks.