It seems inevitable that every year something forces us to break into our holiday review series with a non-holiday product. This year Free League has been determined to do exactly that. First with the release of the Walking Dead Universe RPG, which we’ll have a review of in the new year, and now they put out this Kickstarter for the Electric State. Fine, you win Free League, you know I can’t resist the world of Simon Stålenhag.
For those who don’t recognize the name, Stålenhag is the artist who created the world of Tales From the Loop, Our Friends The Machines, and Things From The Flood. There is also a beautiful Tales from the Loop series on Prime and a big screen adaptation of Electric State in production.
You can read our previous reviews that are linked above, but here’s the bare minimum you need to know. In Tales from the Loop you play as kids in an alternate 1980s and in Things from the Flood you play as teens in the same alternate 1990s. Electric State, for what it’s worth, has not been confirmed as a continuation of TftL and TftF but you play as travellers across a similar alternate America in 1997. The previous games take place in a town affected by a facility called “The Loop” whereas this one lets you travel through other locations with no mention (in the Kickstarter) of The Loop or the technological impact it had on the world. The preview images feature a bunch of broken down robot-like things that very much fit in that world.
Different locations evidently play like individual adventures or campaigns, giving it a narrative structure closer to Mutant: Year Zero than TftL although I got that information from the comment page of the campaign, and haven’t had the availability to dig into Mutant:Year Zero. But that game is the origin of the Year Zero engine behind most of Free Leagues games. (Including Electric State.)
Pledge levels 498 SEK (Swedish Krona) for the Standard physical edition or 898 SEK for the limited Deluxe edition. Both options include the Digital edition, which you can also get for 248 SEK.
One of the great things about the Year Zero engine is that it’s surprisingly easy to drop in game-specific mechanics into other Year Zero powered games. When the Alien RPG first came out, I heard about a group playing TftL with the addition of the horror Stress mechanics introduced with Alien. Judging by the comments on the campaign page, and the ease of Year Zero, there is Zero chance this won’t be rolled together with the rest of the Stålenhag-verse at many tables and I’m super excited for that.
You can back the Electric State RPG’s very short campaign on Kickstarter until December 19, 2023.
You can find Free League Publishing online at www.freeleaguepublishing.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/FriaLigan.
TheRatHole.ca does not accept payments for our reviews but may have received a promotional copy of this product for review.