You know how dying in Dark Souls is a complete pain in the backside? Well imagine if you died in the game and that was it. Your chance at playing that game over forever? Welcome to Upsilon Circuit.
The description of the game on their official website is:
“Part gameshow, part action RPG, Upsilon Circuit is an exclusive single server online 8 player game. When someone dies in Upsilon Circuit, they can never play again. When you are chosen to play, the world watches, and everyone has a hand in your journey, both friend and foe. Upsilon Circuit is two games intertwined. The Contestants adventure, while the Audience intervenes. Each Contestant explores the overworld and generated dungeons in search of the Dream Tech Crystals. They fight monsters, avoid traps, and compete with the opposing team. When the Contestant fights monsters or gets treasure, the rewards go to the Audience. Rewards are used collectively by the Audience to level up the Contestant, send in monsters, or helpful items. Simply put, the Audience is part dungeon master, part strategist, and part judge and jury.”
A different premise for a video game to say the least, Upsilon Circuit is a definite attention grabber. And with their host, Ray Castman, (the lovechild of Ronald Reagan and Max Headroom), it’s a definite product of the 21st Century, involving crowd-funding, online streaming, social media, e-sports and a dash of reality TV. The thought that you get one shot (you cannot miss your chance to blow, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime), is intriguing, with a fair bit of work still to go on it, it’s definitely one to keep an eye on, and it’s free-to-play model shows no risk to gamers wanting to have a chance of playing.
There are set-windows of gameplay, and it being open world wide, the question I would ask is what time-zone will the game be set in? No matter where or when, it’ll leave people unable to regularly watch or potentially play, part of that whole, world is round thing we have going for ourselves.
Anyway, that aside it looks an absolutely brilliant concept and one that is worth keeping an eye on as we edge closer to release. But with not even a word on the platform it will be on (I’m assuming PC), there is still more to come from this exciting looking title.
What are your thoughts on this? Fantastic concept or a tad misguided? Whatever your opinion, let us know in the comments below or in the RGM Forums.
