Permadeath? Meet Perma-Permadeath

There are games in the world that have permadeath, where a character is lost forever if he or she dies. In Upsilon Circuit, your permadeath will be permareal. Any deaths that occur in this game will mean that you can never play again.

Upsilon Circuit will be part gameshow, part RPG, according to the development site. This fantasy RPG will only ever have eight players on a server at a time, divided into teams of four. As the players fight through the overworld and dungeons, they are competing against each other to gain more EXP and treasure than the other team.

But this game will have another feature to draw attention.

According to the development site, Upsilon Circuit will have the Contestants, who will adventure, and the Audience, who will watch. As the developers say, “When you are chosen to play, the world watches, and everyone has a hand in your journey, both friend and foe.”

The Audience feature is particularly interesting, as they will have a hand in the adventure that the Contestants are slogging their way through. As Contestants fight monsters, explore and gain treasure, the EXP will go straight to the Audience. The Audience then has control over the Skill Tree and EXP must be used collectively to level up the adventurer.

“Simply put, the Audience is part dungeon master, part strategist, and part judge & jury,” says the Upsilon Circuit website.

This Audience feature could either be incredibly awesome or incredibly disastrous. This is opening the door to Audience members to completely troll players and sabotage a run of the game to no end. But then, this could be what the developers are looking to allow. Having only one life in a videogame is enough to give me anxiety, but put my fate in the hands of an invisible force that is making important choices for me and that sounds like the recipe for a heart attack.

Upsilon Circuit is still in development with the team from Robot Loves Kitty. Calvin Goble and Alix Stolzer are the husband and wife duo running the indie game studio. Their first game was Neverdaunt: 8Bit and since then they have released the titles Tiny Plumber and Legend of Dungeon. Upsilon Circuit will be the fourth major game they have developed, along with their jam games Zap ‘em Dino Cowboys, Telekinetic Minimalist Cult 5: Packrat Nightmare and Cat Gentleman’s Play: Insult Spinner 10 Cents.

Upsilon Circuit does not have a release date yet, but you can sign up for their mailing list and be there for when the show starts.