If you didn’t know, I live in South Africa. it’s a country that unfortunately is riddled with political issues still coping with the terrible past of apartheid which more often than not, warrants negative press. But even with this constant negativity, we have small studios making international waves in the gaming community, STASIS, a crowdfunded point-and-click, BROFORCE one of the top-selling steam side-scroller games, Vapour a unity made slender-style horror game.
The internet has enabled people to have the ability to kickstart a game, edit code to create a mod or produce something of amazing quality without the need a giant studio or large financial backing – one of those examples being Organosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvV65wZiEQ
Organosphere is a survival game which so far, seems like what you would usually expect from the usual steam game, except that it’s set in South Africa’s iconic Joburg; and the enemies aren’t zombies, it’s bugs and trees hell-bent on fucking up your day.
“You must escape and venture into the heart of Johazardousburg and it’s lush environment to discover the meaning of all existence as we know it. All while defending yourself from the cruel reality of nature with your trusty shotgun,” explains the game’s description.
The game features iconic monuments and landmarks from places such as Ponte, Brixton and Hillbrow there is also a host of other delicious South African content such as braais, markets, dodgy clubs and taxi ranks.
Besides the extremely unrealistic animations (and trees bleeding?) It’s pretty freakin’ cool that there is a game set in Johannesburg, let’s not lie, with a number of beautiful uninhabited buildings, mixture of run-down infrastructure with up-coming Maboneng/ Braamfontein, Johannesburg is the perfect setting for an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic title – not the idyllic scenes of Washington in The Division or vast woods of Day Z’s Chenarus .
While the game seems like it still has a long way to go (especially the gameplay), I am immensely proud of the direction we are going as a gaming community – let’s hope entrepreneurs and investors cultivate the scene so South Africa can get a piece of the billion dollar industry pie.
Check out more on the game’s Facebook page and website.
Source – Youth Cult
