''Skyshine's Bedlam'' is a turn-based tactical

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...

and

simulation game Simulation video games are a diverse super-category of video games, generally designed to closely simulate real world activities. A simulation game attempts to copy various activities from real life in the form of a game for various purposes such ...

developed by Skyshine Games and published by

Versus Evil Versus Evil, LLC is an American video game publisher founded by former ZeniMax Online Studios marketing director Steve Escalante to focus on the independent video game market. Versus Evil's staff is located in California, Texas, and Maryland. His ...

. It was released on September 16, 2015, for Windows and Mac OS X. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its art and music, but criticized its story and high level of difficulty.

Gameplay

The player is the overseer of a massive wheeled fortress known as the Dozer, and must cross a

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; astro ...

wasteland safely. The player can choose a route on a minimap, which determines what types of encounters they have. The player can also upgrade the Dozer in order to make traversal of the wasteland easier. Fights take place on an isometric grid. Squad members come in four classes, each with their own specialties. Soldiers cannot be replaced when they die, and it is almost inevitable that casualties will occur.

Plot

The player must navigate the Dozer from Bysantine, a futuristic metropolis, to Aztec City, a distant

utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...

. Many factions control parts of the wasteland in between, such as Cyborgs, Mutants, Marauders, or A.I. Each trip is

procedurally generated In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...

, and events occur differently in each playthrough.

Development

The setting of the game was formerly a

tabletop RPG A tabletop role-playing game (typically abbreviated as TRPG or TTRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a form of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech. Participa ...

, and was based on 80's science fiction and

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical Studies Rules ...

. The developers were also inspired by the fast pace of games like '' FTL'' and ''

XCOM ''XCOM'' (originally called ''X-COM'') is a science fiction video game franchise featuring an elite international organization tasked with countering alien invasions of Earth. The series began with the strategy video game '' X-COM: UFO Defense' ...

''. The game uses the engine of ''

The Banner Saga ''The Banner Saga'' is a tactical role-playing video game developed by Stoic Studio and published by Versus Evil. It was released for personal computers and mobile phones in 2014, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2016 and for Nintendo Switch ...

''. It was originally known as simply ''Bedlam'', but changed its name to avoid conflict with the game '' Bedlam'' released shortly beforehand, despite having already filed a trademark for the name. It was developed after a successful

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

campaign which raised $166,540.

Reception

The game received mixed reviews, with an aggregate score of 67/100 on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. Ian Birnbaum of

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...

rated the game 72/100, calling it "punishing" and "stressful", and saying that the difficulty was too high for him to enjoy. He stated that the inability to recruit new squad members if your existing ones died was where the game "crossed the line from enjoyably brutal to stressful frustration". However, he praised the soundtrack, saying that it was his "favorite ..in any game since ''

Bastion A bastion or bulwark is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fi ...

''", and called the art "wonderful". Mat Paget of

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

rated the game 60/100, saying that while he believed it would be the "perfect game" for him at first glance, it did not have "much strategic depth" or a reason to "care about he characters. He called the story "devoid of interesting or layered tales". Artur Cnotalski of Eurogamer Poland rated the game 40/100, saying that it was "monotonous", with the storyline "devoid of any depth".

References

{{Reflist 2015 video games Roguelike video games Turn-based tactics video games Simulation video games Windows games MacOS games Single-player video games Post-apocalyptic video games Indie video games Video games developed in the United States Kickstarter-funded video games Versus Evil games