Spiritual sequel to Uplink, Subversion unveiled

Uplink is one of the most beloved titles to computer gamers. A "cinematic hacking game", it garnered a lot of praise and community expansion in its heyday. Nine years later, it's coming back around again with Subversion, a spiritual sequel.

The game's been announced for several years now, but today is the first real reveal. Keeping in mind the screens shown here are early (Introversion's lead designer Chris Delay says "we've lots of plans for the look, but broadly speaking you are going to be looking at 3d blueprints"), the basic idea is, "what would Uplink look like if it was set in real buildings rather than inside a computer?"

The game will be set in a "high tech" environment; you'll command a team of skilled operatives in a "hostile, high security building." Sounds quite a bit like another PC classic, Syndicate, actually. Devices and abilities on hand will include Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, and  Trickery.

Delay describes the tech demo with excitement:

[What] I showed on stage during BATFA showed how a team of two agents could infiltrate a high security office. They used a variety of gadgets like wall scanners and motion trackers to gradually unveil the office layout, which begins invisible and requires various Recon tactics until you have revealed the layout. One of the agents was caught and tazered by a security guard, but not before I'd hacked in and taken control of the cctv cameras dotted around the office. This massively expands your view of the location, and uncovered the primary target - a secure server room with some data we needed to destroy.

Delay notes they were developing the game "top down" (filling empty space with city elements) for a long time, but since going "bottom up" (building people, items and interactions for them first), they got to a tech demo state in five months. Though they're still in the experimental phase, "things are coming together rapidly now." We look forward to the eventual release of Subversion.