Video game.
Hotline Miami and Shadow Warrior publisher Devolver Digital has announced that it will be publishing a turn-based action-stealth platformer called Ronin.
Due on PC, Mac and Linux via Steam later this year, Ronin looks like a mix of Transistor's turn-based action with Gunpoint's stealth, aesthetic and jumping mechanic. There's a little Mark of the Ninja in there too, with its cunning, violent infiltrations.
Developer Tomasz Waclawek once humbly referred to Ronin as a "Gunpoint ripoff" on Reddit, but Gunpoint developer Tom Francis strongly disagreed with this modest assessment and called it "an awesome grappling-hook ninja-assassin game" in the notes to his Let's Play video of Ronin's early build.
"It's clearly not a Gunpoint ripoff, because the core mechanics are so different," Francis elaborated on his blog. "A lot of what it does copy is superficial, and that stuff doesn't matter. But the jump is pretty central, and if that was directly taken from Gunpoint, I'm delighted. I wouldn't want anyone to reuse Gunpoint's artwork or music, but the ideas in it are absolutely there for the taking. Every non-standard thing about it, from the jumping controls to the saving system, I did because I wanted more games to be that way. If there's actually a case where Gunpoint caused more games to work this way, that's a huge thrill for me."
Clearly, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Waclawek offered the following rebuttal to Francis' appraisal: "This is most disappointing. I tried really hard to make a Gunpoint clone and he says its not like Gunpoint. I really don't know what I've done wrong:("
There's a free demo of an early build of Ronin already available from its official site. The full game will span 15 stages as you attempt to assassinate five heavily guarded evil-doers.
Ronin has really come together since Francis took its prototype for a spin last summer. See how it currently looks in Devolver's announcement trailer below.
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