Well Halloween is just around the corner, and to celebrate the guys at Big Robot have release version 0.6 of ‘Sir, you are being hunted‘. There have been a few minor changes, such as the inventory and loot windows being switched round (loot on the left, inventory on the right) perhaps as a symptom of my psychological condition from playing too many game with loot systems, I didn’t actually noticed till I read about the change in the patch notes. But i feel this is a good thing, sometimes the changes that you don’t notice are the best as it just make the game flow and feel better, even if you can’t put your finger on why, which is what happened to me. Another minor change, is when you hover your mouse over items in the inventory now, it tells you underneath if the are in anyway useful, for example, a piece of edible food will be marks as usable, a rifle as equitable, random junk like boots and skulls as… well junk and stuff you could eat but shouldn’t as dubious. this saves you the time of having to randomly try something in your inventory and see if you could use it.
The new switched round layout that I failed to notice
New item codes give you an idea if its worth taking any piece of loot
The next major update is the new industrial biome. it has a lot more buildings then the others, plus a central canal running through the map. This creates some interesting situations as you can only cross the canal at certain points, leaving you to hope the area is free from robots before moving, as the crossing seem to always be nice and exposed. My only feeling about this is, most of the biomes and just variation on the rural theme, rather then a new place. this wasn’t too noticeable before, but the industrial biome shows it up as basically being the rural theme with a few more building and walls being plonked down rather then being a whole new place to explore.
The new industrial biome
A canal separates the map creating some interesting situations
There are two new enemy types, the first one I encountered was the scarecrow. initially I approached up to just to see what it would do, i was a bit taken aback as it all seem to do was open its glowing red eyes and stare at me while making a moaning noise,. it would not even attack me when i got close. It was then I saw what must have been 8 or 9 robots making haste to my position, the blasted scarecrow has alerted them to my location. thinking i would sneak away, I turned my back on the scarecrow and moved into cover at the edge of the field. When I looked back to where the scarecrow had been, it was gone. I could still hear its moans, and they didn’t seem to be getting quieter, looking around my position I jumped out of my skin when I saw it was now a few feet behind me! each time I move it kept following me, but only when I was not looking. if you’ve ever seen any of the Doctor Who episodes with the weeping angels in it, now imagine them in a game, that’s what you get with the scarecrow. The only way to avoid this is to either not alert it, or keep moving away while maintaining sight contact at all times. easier said then done with what seems like the whole map worth of hunters converging in on you.
The scarecrow, look a bit creepy but not too bad
How about now?
The other new enemy is the bog monster, my first thought when I saw it was the tneticle creature from Half-Life 1. it springs out of water briefly and the retreats back into it, before returning. From the promo video for this update I saw, it can also apparently move, but I’ve not seen that in the world I’m currently playing. initially, like the scarecrow it seemed to be pretty harmeless, tilll, for the sake of science, I decided to brave the water with it and approach it. It didn’t end well. Once I reloaded my save, I released what the purpose of both these new enemy’s were for. in previous versions of Sir the two great places to hide was the long grass in fields, or in the water. now both these enemys make both solutions less safe, but cleverly and importantly, do not make both solution impossible and prevent the game getting frustrating.
From here your safe
From here, less so.
Sir is really shaping up to be something special, there are still a few bugs which break the immersion, like a boat to one of the other island being stranded in a lake, But overall its getting there. I’m hoping when they do the urban biome, they take the plunge and redo the procedural generation to make a proper full urban area, and we don’t end up with the rural setting with more houses. I’m also still waiting for my VTOL horse that they showed in the concept art at the beginning. Come on lads, give me my pony!
Did you really need a dock that big?