Virtue and a Sledgehammer will release on October 27, developer Deconstructeam announced alongside a new trailer that premiered during the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct, according to PC Gamer. The studio also confirmed the date in a post on the game's Steam page, Rock Paper Shotgun reported.
Players take the role of Pratelle, who returns to her hometown and tears it down building by building while smashing the androids that now occupy it. According to PC Gamer, those androids are digitized versions of the town's former residents. The story unfolds through Pratelle's memories of her relationships with her mother and her sister, and Rock Paper Shotgun described the sister as apparently responsible for the ghostly robots.
The new trailer cuts between flashbacks from the protagonist's life and a sequence of therapy-style questions that grow more disturbing as it goes on, PC Gamer said. The outlet singled out the destructible environments in the footage, comparing the scale of the demolition to Red Faction: Guerrilla. One line in the trailer, "A machine will never hate itself enough to become better," was read by PC Gamer as the game framing self-improvement as something driven by self-loathing rather than affection.
In its Steam post, Deconstructeam said the full version has plenty of surprises in store, and warned players about its tone.
So far, people who played the whole thing have reported ending up emotionally drained. It may well be our harshest game to date.
A demo released in June is available on Steam and covers the game's opening area. Rock Paper Shotgun, whose staff played that demo, characterized it as a game of "chunky, crumbly, crushing catharsis." PC Gamer showed gameplay from Virtue and a Sledgehammer during its own June showcase, and the game can be wishlisted on Steam ahead of launch.
Deconstructeam's earlier games include The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a narrative game about a fortune-telling witch who designs her own tarot cards, and the cyberpunk bartending game The Red Strings Club.
