Originally revealed in a cool trailer way back in April earlier this year, Hello Sunshine is the latest title created by Red Thread Games, the studio previously behind Dustborn and Dreamfall Chapters, just to name a couple. Hello Sunshine, however, personally struck me as the most intriguing game I’d seen from the small team of fifteen people located in Oslo, Norway.
Denshattack! Is Anime Tony Hawk With A Train As The Skateboard
Do a… trainflip??
Last month, I was able to jump on a call with Ragnar Tørnquist, Founder and CEO of Red Thread, along with Jonathan Nielssen, the director of Hello Sunshine. In this setting, I was shown about 10 minutes of actual gameplay for Hello Sunshine, which is yet to be revealed publicly by the team.
Along with the rest of the group on the call, we were also able to ask the team some additional questions we had about Hello Sunshine itself after seeing the game in action for the first time. Here are all the details I learned about this very cool and stylish-looking first-person, narrative-driven, survival RPG.
By the way, it’s also completely playable in co-op as well as solo, and both experiences are required to learn all the narrative details about the game. Grab a friend!
Survival In A Hostile World
Right off the bat, the first thing that was immediately clear in Hello Sunshine is that you’re going to need to take some extra precautions to simply be able to survive in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. You see, the world has fallen into a sort of desert wasteland-type biome that’s been brought about by corporate greed and overreach. In fact, there’s apparently a bit of a mystery to Hello Sunshine that you’ll uncover across both types of playthroughs about this corpo downfall as well.
In this wasteland, the sun is extra hot, to the point that you can’t stay out in direct sunlight for long before a meter on your HUD depletes all the way, and you’re forced to restart your current run/objective. This means that there’s an extreme premium placed on water and other forms of hydration, so you’ll constantly be scavenging for these things in order to survive.
Of course, it’s not just a matter of survival in the elements. There are also several hostile drone/robotic enemies that you’ll meet out in the desert, including some things like giant robotic crabs that the dev team was sure to mention you’ll actually want to simply run away from at first instead of trying to engage with them. In fact, once you take one of these down for the first time, it serves as a landmark moment in the game where you know you must be getting stronger.
You’ll find gear out in the world as you explore, which can be used to craft certain useful items and even new weapons, like bows with explosive arrows, for example. This loop of grabbing gear, crafting items, and leveraging them in battle looked fast and fluid, and I’m excited to see how it all comes together in the full release some day.
Right off the bat, the first thing that was immediately clear in Hello Sunshine is that you’re going to need to take some extra precautions to simply be able to survive in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.
However, combat in Hello Sunshine is actually totally optional for the most part, according to the devs, so you’re more than free to try to get through each section of the game sneakily and peacefully too. Aggressive play will attract more bots you’ll need to fight off, but also more resources you can scavenge from them as a result. You’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of your actions constantly as such.
All of this looked nice enough on its own, but Hello Sunshine also has one giant thing going for it to set it apart from any other post-apocalyptic survival RPG.
A Little Help From Your Giant Robot Friend
As you’ve surely seen by now from the trailers and promo art, Hello Sunshine focuses heavily on a giant robot companion that you’ll be following behind for the bulk of the experience. Well, I say “companion,” but Red Thread was also keen to point out to us that initially, the robot won’t care about you at all. You’re essentially an ant to it, so it doesn’t really care whether you live or die as long as you aren’t hindering it on its path.
Of course, this relationship with the robot growing and changing throughout the experience is what is going to eventually set Hello Sunshine apart and more than likely attach a strong, emotional core to the game as we bond with the robot over time. The team told us that movies like The Iron Giant were a big influence here, so we can surely expect the game to start hitting us in the feels eventually.
Emotional aspects aside, the giant robot companion also factors into the gameplay mechanics constantly in Hello Sunshine. Since we’ve already mentioned that you can’t stay out in direct sunlight too long, it stands to reason that a giant, walking robot could be used as a constantly moving source of precious shade. Bingo.
This means you’ll closely follow the robot through each level of the game, sticking close to make sure you have a source of shade whenever you’re about to overheat and run out of hydration. We were told that there is better loot to be found further away from the robot typically, so you’ll have to constantly decide whether the risk of separating from your shade source is worth the possible reward to go hunting for some extra special gear.
This also drives a certain feeling of momentum throughout each playthrough, which the dev team thinks works tremendously in this game’s favor. You don’t have time to stop and think about every course of action. In order to survive, you’ll need to be quick on your feet, making split-second decisions constantly in order to stay close enough to the moving robot to survive.
The team told us that movies like The Iron Giant were a big influence here, so we can surely expect the game to start hitting us in the feels eventually.
At the end of the day, you’ll wind up at a Hello Sunshine station where you can rest of the night, recycle unwanted gear into 3D printer pellets to craft more useful items, as well as have some bonding moments with your robo-buddy. The game promises to have a ton of environmental storytelling, but also these instances during the quiet times between you and the robot, or perhaps some other NPCs in the world you’ll bump into to keep growing the story and setting.
There is a greater “purpose” in the game, but for the first couple of hours, it’s just going to be about learning to survive in these harsh conditions alongside a giant robot before the mystery of the game begins to reveal itself to you more.
Hello, Anticipation
If you think Hello Sunshine looks as cool as I do, we’ll all need to keep waiting for more news about an eventual release date, though it will surely not make it by the end of 2025. As of right now, the game is confirmed for PC, with no other news to report about any additional consoles at this time.
If you’d like to follow along for more updates as the game continues to be developed, you can wishlist Hello Sunshine on Steam right now. While you’re there, you can also follow a link to Red Thread’s Discord account, as well as sign up to playtest the game at a later date.
Red Thread also just showed off a brand-new trailer for Hello Sunshine at The PC Gaming Show, which you can watch below.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
