Red Rampant a new narrative-driven action-adventure game set during the Scottish Wars of Independence and Robert the Bruce’s battle for the Scottish crown is now in early access on Steam – and has already been nominated for a major award.
The game offers players the chance to ask: If you could, how would you (re)write Scotland’s history?
Created by Electic Synthesis, a two-man development team headquartered in Perth, the game offers a new perspective on a turbulent part of Scotland’s past, with the intriguing ability to go back and alter time to change the course of history itself.
According to Eclectic Synthesis:
The default outcome of our narrative is crushing annihilation for the fledgling Scottish rebellion, but through the enigmatic rewind drug, gifted by the shrouded figure of The Alchemist, players can literally reverse defeat and steal victory.
With the ability to travel back in time through their memories of previous gameplay and begin again, players use knowledge gained from past mistakes and hindsight of future events to rewrite the history books.
Eclectic Synthesis told the Scottish Games Network that the game “respects history in telling this story but it also embraces the mythological wrappings of Robert the Bruce’s iconic underdog tale.”
Players will explore a historically-accurate, war-torn Scotland but will also have the opportunity to discover moments of the more fantastic… if they have the curiosity to look.
Navigating this war-weary Scotland, players will face a guerrilla campaign against the medieval world’s greatest military force amid sharpening knives in every shifting shadow as Bruce’s ego makes enemies in every corner of the country.
Red Rampant is currently in early access for PC, with the next phase of production planning an overhaul of visuals and animation, alongside implementation of the combat system. In November 2023, the game was nominated for the ‘Spirit of Scotland’ awards in the Scottish Games Awards – leading to a great write-up from The National newspaper.
About Eclectic Synthesis
While work on Red Rampant kicked off in 2017, Eclectic Synthesis was established in 2020, by co-founders Jake McCullagh and Chris Walker following a chance meeting at Glasgow’s central station on new year’s eve. Neither of the team come from a game development background, with Jake having studied physics and Chris film and history.
Despite this, the studio has worked with over 35 different team members to bring Red Rampant to life, including Strike Fight (combat choreography) Fiona Watson (historian) and Audio Outsource (audio, obvs…). The team invested over £20K of their personal money in the game, secured another £53,000 in funding and worked with multiple universities, including Abertay, Warwick and De Montford, to bring Red Rampant to life.
The studio is keen to speak to new potential partners, investors and publishers about the future of Red Rampant (including a possible translation of the game into gaelic). You can reach them here.
Play Red Rampant Now
Red Rampant is OUT NOW for Windows PC via Steam and until August 5th 2024 is 30% off.