Double Fine is known for. Rad’s world
is a goofy, neon-soaked playground,
and though it’s yet another title
making an unnecessary play for ’80s
nostalgia (what do cassette tapes and
floppy disks have to do with the post-
apocalypse?), there’s a real charm to
its Saturday morning cartoon vibe.Children of men
And it’s nice to see a hopeful spin
on the end of the world for once.
Grass and flowers literally burst out
of the ground wherever you walk,
transforming the world around you as
you progress. There’s a sense that
your teen really is changing things for
the better. It’s not just a neat visual,
either – not only does it help you
navigate the randomised levels by
showing you where you’ve been, but
you also run faster on grassy ground,
giving an intriguing tactical twist to
your movement in combat.
Adding further depth are ‘internal
mutations’. While these don’t confer
active abilities, or weird visual
signifiers, they do give you powerful
passive buffs and, importantly, you
can have any amount of them. The
developer promises that by the end
of a run you could have dozens
accumulated, doing everything from
giving you a resistance to fire to
turning food you eat into currency.
The idea is that all these mutations
and other randomised elements of
the game should keep things feeling
fresh run after run. In typical roguelike
fashion, death means starting over,
with each new teen a fresh canvas for
your genetic dice-rolling. Persistent
progress comes in the form of your
hometown – you’re able to invest
your hard-earned cash in upgraded
shops, a bank and more, giving you an
advantage in future runs. You can chat
to its various inhabitants, too, whose
dialogue helps to flesh out the story.
Return for a visit mid-run and they’ll
even comment on the mutations
you’ve picked up (presumably with
more nuance than just, ‘Aaargh!’).
The key unknowns for us are how
fun and fair the combat feels, and
how much variety it actually has. As
long as Rad can nail those essentials,
its creativity and flair should carry it
the rest of the way to being a new
roguelike classic. We’ve got all 12
fingers crossed for it. QAfter not one but two full-blown
apocalypses, the world of Rad is not
so much a wasteland as it is a loose
collection of dry, irradiated chunks.
Fit only for a population of glowing
mutant monsters, it’s a truly broken
place – but it can still be fixed.
It turns out the children really are
the future. In this top-down action
roguelike, you’ll take on the role of
a baseball bat-wielding teenager
tasked with healing the toxic desert.
Modified via some arcane process,
your body actually absorbs radiation,
allowing life to bloom in your wake- and mutating you into a bizarre
superhuman in the process.
Gather enough ‘rads’ while exploring
the procedurally generated levels, and
you could manifest anything from a
pair of bat-like wings to a huge cobra
head that snaps at enemies, to a
twitching thorax that lays monstrous
spider eggs. Each gives you new
active abilities to aid you in combat
and traversal, and you’ll even find
synergies between them. Gain a
flaming arm that shoots out fireballs,
for example, and you’ll find you can
set the enfeebling gas squirted out
by your fungal back-growths alight,
toasting any enemies who come near.
Your bizarre transformations are
brought to life by exactly the kind of
quirky, colourful art style developer
Rad
Exploring an irradiated world
can really change you...
Robin Valentine
PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO DEVELOPER DOUBLE FINE
ETA SUMMER 2019DOUBLE
DOWN
Two apocalypses
means you’ll comb
through two layers of
ruins – one reflecting
’80s civilisation, with
bunkers and bomb
shelters full of loot to
discover, and the
other a futuristic
society that came
after, whose
high-tech vaults
contain teleportation
devices. You’ll
encounter new
communities formed
in the wasteland, too- you can trade with
factions and take on
side-quests for loot.
The TV-worshipping
Cathode Raiders, for
example, might ask
you to find a sacred
remote control –
down the back of the
sofa, perhaps?
“There’s a real charm to
its Saturday morning
cartoon vibe”
Every melee weapon in Rad is just a different kind of baseball batMore Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 031
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