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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Malindy Hetfeld

Virtue and a Sledgehammer – take a literal hammer to your past

A dark-skinned short-haired woman in dungarees stands in front of a church holding a sledgehammer, a robot in the background.
Taking ‘20 pounds of physical media’ to her town … Virtue and a Sledgehammer. Photograph: Devolver Digital

In the boot of her car, Pratelle carries the corpse of her mother and a giant sledgehammer. Her mission is simple: take the hammer to her home town. As you enter shops and homes through the door and leave them through the opposite wall, it becomes clear that the robots who either attack you or flee are all digital versions of your old neighbours.

Pratelle, with her close-cropped hair and dungarees, read to me as a queer woman, but interestingly, testers of the game often mistook her as a man. The team at developer Deconstructeam and longtime collaborator Selkie Harbour didn’t anticipate this confusion but found it fits the character perfectly, especially in this setting based on a small Spanish town like those in which the developers grew up.

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