Valve Announces it will distribute indy game “RagDoll Kung fu” via Steam
Posted by King_Andy on August 13th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Yesterday Valve announced on Steam Powered that the experimental indy game "Rag Doll Kung Fu" will be distributed via Steam. While I'm not a big fan of Steam, we can call this good news because it probably means that the game is coming out soon.
For those of you not familiar with the hype surrounding this bizarre little game; RagDoll Kung Fu is the brainchild of Mark Healey, an artist for Lionhead studios (developers behind the Black & White series and Fable), who managed to put the game together in his spare time. The Game promises to be like marionettes fighting kung fu, except there are no strings. That seems like a strange promise, but the game itself looks stranger. Judging from the trailer, the characters are all physics based, (Like a rag-doll with springs) and the players control the characters by manipulating their individual limbs. This should result in very flexible gameplay where users can come up with their own 'fighting style' instead of relying on pre-made animations or always falling back on some ultimate killer move. I'm eager to see if this innovation will actually work well, or just end up being cumbersome.
Gameplay is to be entirely based on the mouse. It will offer a single player campaign, (complete with over 15 minutes of live action FMV of white people pretending to be in a poorly made kung fu movie), online multiplayer, and perhaps best of all : Support for up to eight players on a single computer with multiple mice. If this lives up to expectations it could be one of the greatest party games ever, if you happen to have some kind of massive mouse surplus.
Valve closed saying "In the coming weeks we'll have more info, including pricing and a release date." We'll be sure to let you all know when it's up, though the automated news update that'll get pushed over Steam will probably beat us to it.
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