Skyshines Bedlam

Skyshine’s Bedlam is the first game from new studio Skyshine Games, founded in 2014 by people who are nevertheless industry veterans. The game is built around turn-based combat and complemented by RPG elements. Journey through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a rolling fortress known as a “Dozer”.

Round and Round It Goes

The developers of Bedlam have obviously taken a lot of their inspiration from the Borderlands and Fallout series. The post-apocalyptic setting with its maniacal robots and speech-impaired mutants is highly reminiscent of these franchises. Combat is turn-based and takes place from an isometric perspective where the player gets the first move and can control up to four mercenaries.

The battlefield looks like it’s right out of the first two Fallout games, but the clashes themselves are a lot simpler. You can send four different classes of warrior into battle. But whether he’s a “Deadeye” (sniper) or a “Frontliner” (basically a tank), the differences are pretty minimal. At least the developers made an effort to give the good guys names and short backstories, which has exactly zero to do with how the game plays, however. There are also goodies like meat, oil, and energy cells to collect and traps to avoid. Your companions’ health will mostly be really low, and when I played the game, I lost a lot of them the first time they were attacked. Even in easy mode. The video tutorials didn’t help much, either, to turn your first mass extinction into some kind of learning experience. It just is what it is.

Another resource is passengers. You can somehow accommodate up to 1000 of them in your Dozer, taking them who knows where. If you’re losing a battle, a few hundred of them will exit the vehicle on their own. But if you’re thinking the point is to keep all these freeloaders alive, you’re quite mistaken – there are nice mutants who helpfully offer to turn a good chunk of these passengers into oil. No questions – just say “thanks” and try not to think too much about that movie Snowpiercer. At least Bedlam manages to be funny sometimes, but that’s about it, unfortunately.

Bad Lamb

Combat in Bedlam has very little to offer in terms of variety. After about the third encounter, you’ve pretty much seen everything there is to see. The graphics are really indie (with no graphics options, either), not interesting enough that you’re going to feel like you have to see every scenario and every enemy type. Enemies have the same classes your own squad does. Once you’re back on the road, you can research upgrades to reduce your oil and meat consumption or increase the amount of energy you get from energy cells. Your armored bus has a few weapons systems of its own, and you can use it to conjure up splash damage in combat.

In the course of the game you can unlock new, better Dozers. The map has a few dozen locations, which can be reached in stages. The Dozer will make several stops along the way to each destination, which is where the RPG elements come into play. If it’s not something strange on the side of the road that needs to be investigated, then it’s a couple of ill-tempered mutants looking for a fight – at the very least, this provides a bit of variety. The decisions you make in the rather tongue-in-cheek dialogues don’t really have any consequences to speak of. Either there’s something for the taking, or worst-case scenario, you go away empty-handed.

The comic-book-style graphics are nice, but nothing to write home about. They look like they’re based on the work of John Mueller, who used to work for Dark Horse Comics. Like I said, the graphics do look good, but good luck trying to find any kind of original style in it. It’s déjà vu all over again, as they say. As for the sound, on the other hand, I only have good things to say – electronic music that really underscores the post-apocalyptic atmosphere. They really should have saved it for a better game.