A NEW game in which two Scottish scientists accidentally resurrect William Wallace and an entire 13th-century army is set to be released next year.
Graveheart – designed by dutch video game producer Vincent Van Geel – sees you take the role of an “ordinary British soldier” in the 1980s sent to rescue some reporters.
The problem? Zombie William Wallace and his army of the undead are marching south, possessing and raising more of the dead.
The fast-paced retro first-person shooter (or FPS) is apparently inspired by Van Geel’s childhood memories of watching Braveheart and his love of British comedy films and television shows.
The Dutch producer told The National that the idea came about after rewatching Mel Gibson’s 1995 epic and noticing both its historical inaccuracies and its “over-the-top” performances.
“I always had to laugh at an older age – not when I was a kid, but an older age – at Mel Gibson’s early ’90s hair,” Van Geel said.
But it was only when he then watched the cult classic Army of Darkness that he thought of Graveheart – combining undead comedy with the setting of the Scottish Wars of Independence.
“The idea just popped into my head at that point in time: wouldn’t it be cool to have a bit of an Army of Darkness with that setting?” he said.
Van Geel also cited Monty Python, Father Ted and Jim Carrey’s films as influences on the game’s deliberately silly tone.
In Graveheart – which is set to be released in the first quarter of 2027 – the player doesn’t get to choose their next weapon. Instead, the game’s curse bar determines what comes next, with the arsenal ranging from shotguns, muskets and rocket launchers to swords, snowballs and even poo.
Enemies are designed to react to the player’s attacks, with characters running around screaming after being set on fire, vomiting when terrified and being thrown about by ridiculous weapons.
The game’s enemies include undead Scots, knights, archers, zombie civilians, haunted trees, possessed statues and murderous pigeons.
William Wallace also returns as a recurring boss, appearing with increasingly powerful weapons each time he is defeated.
Van Geel said much of the game was developed organically rather than being fully planned from the beginning.
“Most of the game has actually been built on the fly,” he said. “I start with one level, see how that goes, and then how the humour fits.”
That approach was a change from his day job as a game producer, where projects are usually planned in detail from the outset.
Van Geel, 44, is originally from the Netherlands and lives in Utrecht. He started a game company in 2005, which grew to around 55 employees before he moved into the theme-park industry, working on interactive dark rides, mainly in China.
He later worked across a range of projects, including children’s games. Graveheart is being developed through his independent label, 9000 Legends.
“I just want to build stuff that I like,” he said. “It’ll never make money, but it’s just going to be stuff that I think is hilarious.”
