OK, so we all feel we've had our fill of zombie adventuring over the past few years, but at least some video game developers are attempting to improvise on the familiar theme of the undead apocalypse. While Techland is attempting to bring an emotional family dynamic to its open world thriller Dead Island, French studios Lexis Numérique and VectorCell have been inspired by the legendary Ico for their forthcoming PSN title.
AMY is set 20 years in the future. A comet has crashed into Earth spreading a zombifying virus, and a young woman named Lana is caught up in the chaos. Trapped in a small midwestern town, her future looks bleak until she crosses paths with the eponymous Amy, and eight-year-old autistic girl with strange powers. The player's role is to protect this strange child as the duo attempt to flee the town, past the crowds of shuffling monsters.
As in Ico, you can press a button to take hold of Amy's hand and guide her around the environment – you can even feel her heart pumping through the rumble effect on the pad (and that lets you know how stressed she is – which is apparently an important element). In return, she offers healing properties: in an interesting twist on the idea of zombie contagion, Lana can allow herself to become partially infected in order to pass by groups of undead savages – but she needs Amy nearby to heal her and prevent the disease from consuming them both.
Paul Cuisset, the game's director and head of VectorCell, is a French video game veteran, previously responsible for founding one of the county's great studios, Delphine. Now defunct, the company was responsible for some of the most fascinating and eccentric adventure titles of the nineties including Cruise for a Corpse and Another World (written by Éric Chahi who is also now working on an interesting downloadable title, From Dust).
VectorCell has released a short development diary, which you can watch above. It's short, but it handily lists just about every trendy new graphics technique currently available. See if you can drop at least two of these into casual conversation today.
AMY is due out via PS3 download later this summer.
