Sludge Life is a rattling good title for something, truthfully. But it’s a good higher moniker for Devolver Digital’s newest reveal. A slimey lo-fi open world riot, Sludge Life is a dirty collaboration between developer Terri Vellman and music man Doseone, the parents behind supernatural shootout High Hell. Tag your solution to the highest, tear down your company overlords, or relax and seize a lightweight with the cats on the docks – who the hell cares if you’re caught on a planet fabricated from goo?
You may also recognise these devs from Disc Room, a violent collaboration with Minit’s JW Nijman and Kitty Calis announced this week. Alright lads, tempo yourselves.
Here’s the deal. You’re Ghost, a spraycan-wielding miscreant residing on a dirty little island on a planet fabricated from sludge. Maybe you wanna make a reputation for your self within the tagging scene, laying down paint on each spare inch of wall ’until you’re essentially the most infamous artists in slimetown. Perhaps it’s time to knock the company sludge-munchers at Glug headquarters down a peg, breaking into their places of work and messing with all their shit. Maybe you simply wanna take a cool pic of a cat smoking a cig.
Sludge Life doesn’t actually appear fussed both means. The devs have constructed a compact open world stuffed filled with greasy bastards, eschewing scripted beats “curiosity and free will”. It’s an internet of eventualities to stumble into, characters to pester, rival taggers to tackle. There are games-within-games, a large child and a communal basketball court docket. Sludge Life has a devoted fart button.
Devolver say Sludge Life has a “vibe so thick you can taste it,” and that vibe is a rest room stall at 3am in a barely grim Berlin nightclub. An animated skit looping on a battered previous CRT at an underground gig. That pop-up bagel store within the derelict Leith storage the place I had lunch, after darkish.
Not all of this humour lands, thoughts. Sludge Life’s been a factor for all of 5 hours and I’m already over the entire two-butthole cat schtick. But it’s a bloody sturdy fashion nonetheless, one which bleeds over into the game’s own site – a merch store disguised as a grimey, corrupted desktop, contaminated with the fixed bleep of company pop-ups.
Devolver reckon Sludge Life will hit the Epic Games Store this Spring. ‘Til then, you may at all times hit these vibes early with in-game rapper BIG MUD’s Bandcamp page.
