Wasteland Kings is expanding, will be crowned after Gamescom

Vlambeer's Wasteland Kings was originally created as part of the last Mojam gamejam . Now the Super Crate Box developers plan to level-up the action roguelike, expanding it into a full game. After months of work, it's ready to pillage Steam soon after Gamescom, with its Early Access development to be livestreamed through their website .

"It's a post-apocalyptic world inspired by 60s to 80s science fiction books," Vlambeer's Rami Ismail tells Joystiq . "It's a bunch of mutants and there's this trophy Wasteland throne that they all want to capture, and they fight about that. That's what they do on Tuesdays or something."

The prototype featured eight characters, and more will be added to the full game. Those characters mutate as they gather radioactive waste, gaining powers. This is one of those "don't try this at home" moments. Ismail describes it a mixture of FTL, Spelunky and The Binding of Isaac, which as inspirations go, is a solid triumvirate of roguelikes. "Wasteland Kings feels like the way I think about Vlambeer, he says. A happy place where weird shit happens all the time."

Phil Savage
Editor-in-Chief

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.