Sir, You Are Being Hunted (alternatively titled Madam, You Are Being Hunted)[1] is an open worldsurvival horrorstealthvideo game developed by Big Robot for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux. An alpha version of the game was made available on 19 August 2013. After years of no updates, in September 2021 the game was updated to version 1.5 by the external Dutch game development studio Den of Thieves Games.[2]
Gameplay
The player hides from robots patrolling a town, watching them from afar using binoculars.
In Sir, You Are Being Hunted, players have to survive from 'Hunters' (robots dressed as Victorian gentlemen) who are trying to track down and kill them, whilst attempting to escape from an island. Players are required to scavenge towns and villages for items such as food and weapons to help them survive whilst collecting parts of an exploded machine in order to escape the island. If the robots find a part, they set up sentries around it to defend it from the player.[3] The game's enemies utilise dogs and balloons in order to find the player.[4]
The island played on is procedurally generated, meaning that every playthrough will generate a different landscape.[5] It is populated with villages, towns and other areas where the player can find essential supplies.[4]
Robots
As of "The February update", nine AI robot models are in-game; the upper-class Hunter, middle-class Squire, lower-class Poacher, along with the Dogs, Scarecrows, Bog Monster, Balloons, Riders, mechanical-horse riding fox-hunters, and the Landowner, a huge, aristocratic robot.
Development
After Sir, You Are Being Hunted had been in development for six months, a Kickstarter campaign was launched in November 2012 to crowd fund the game, with a £40,000 goal. Funding ended in December, with a total of £92,551 raised towards game development.[6][7] This amount fell short of the £100,000 that would allow character creation and customization, but Big Robot stated that they would "endeavour to get some aspects of it into the game."[8]
Big Robot founder Jim Rossignol said that the development team wanted to make a game that was "desperate and scary, but without being straight-faced,"[9] and "kitschy but with a genuine underlying threat."[3] Jim stated that the team "had a vision to take what was kind of bleak and frightening about the British landscape and put it into a game", going on to say that they had focused heavily on audio in the game, describing it as "one of those differences that people won't really notice explicitly while they are playing but they will get a lot back from it."[3]
In May 2013 new gameplay videos showcased mountain biomes which had recently been added. These biomes are remote mountainous and rocky areas away from lootable buildings.[10]
On September 1 2021, Big Robot announced they had been collaborating with Dutch game development studio Den of Thieves Games B.V. to update Sir, You Are Being Hunted to version 1.5 bringing various bug fixes, engine upgrades, and a revival of the multiplayer mode which until that point had been broken. [2]
Marketing and release
In April 2013, two gameplay videos were released, showing a developer playing an early version of the game.[11]
Kickstarter backers were allowed to play an alpha version of the game before the full release,[12][13] with it being reported that around 900 players had early access.[3]
On 19 August 2013, the alpha version was made available for Kickstarter backers and purchase through Steam or the Humble Store.[14]
