If you want to see a heap of zombies get sliced up over and over again by a giant blender, this video (posted by Reddit user NorthGuidance) is for you. I've watched it twice in a kind of awed, desensitised hush. Strangely, it makes me want to puree some tomatoes tonight.
This dismemberment tech is a feature of The Black Masses, an open world co-op game from developer Brilliant Game Studios. It also demonstrates how dense the project's crowds can be—and it doesn't seem to impact the performance much. The developers say they can feature over 100,000 characters on-screen and still run at 60fps. On what hardware, I'm not sure.
The Black Masses is set in a medieval fantasy world, represented by a 16 square kilometre island that features forests and castles. To my eye, it looks like a cousin of Warhammer: Vermintide, but obviously with much larger crowds.
Below is another video the developers released back in October, which showcases the co-op in action and explains more about the creation of the game—this is from a pre-alpha version of the game, hence the blocky model representing the second player. What do you think?
There's no official site from what I can see, though the developers do have a Facebook page.
