Last year at GDC we got to see a brief tech demo of a game then called Urban Mysteries from developers Zeitguyz. The developers were back again at the conference to show a much more advanced version of their third person action game, now titled Recoil Retrograd. The Unreal Engine 3 title definitely still shows a lot of promise.

Our new demo of the game came complete with full voice work, animations and textures (last year's demo had few textures and animations in place) as it told the story of a group of men called Cardinals who had the power to go back in time and change history. Originally they used their power to prevent a predicted disaster from taking place in the future but as is the norm with those with great power the Cardinals got corrupted by it and plunged the world in a new Dark Age. The beginning of the game takes place in the year 2052 but it's clearly an alternate history with Victorian era technology and Zeppelin like balloons for transportation.

Your main character also has the ability to go back in time and he wants to free the world from its current state. Naturally the Cardinals don't want this to happen. The first part of the game has your character evading the police and going to a church with a special artifact that will help him go back in time to a certain event. That event is in the early 19th century where he has to battle not just people with muskets and a Cardinal agent with a flame thrower but also make a choice to save one of two people; one is destined to make medicine more advanced while the other makes more advanced technology. Depending on who you save in the 19th century you will go back to an altered 2052.

In the GDC 2008 demo our character saves the tech scientist. He returns to 2052 and right before our eyes the level changes and morphs to a more steel and machinery based world, complete with a steam driven one man mech like vehicle.

Our brief demo ended at that point but it's clear that the game has progress much more than that early demo from a year ago. In particular the art style looks incredible; no warehouses with lots of crates in this game. The dev team is looking to a 2010 release date for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 so we have a long while before we get the final version but we will keep checking in on Recoil Retrograd to get an update on their progress.

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