Returning to your hometown means confronting both family history and android versions of former neighbours in Virtue and a Sledgehammer, a narrative exploration game coming to PC on 27 October. Published by Devolver Digital, the game comes from Deconstructeam, known for Red Strings Club and Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and Selkie Harbour, whose work includes Many Nights a Whisper. It explores family, traditions and the experience of being a misfit through a homecoming built around destruction.
Players wield a sledgehammer to demolish buildings and crush the mechanical replicas inhabiting the town where they grew up. These android ghosts of digitised neighbours occupy a place where tearing down familiar surroundings also awakens memories of the past.
Alongside the destruction, cinematic sequences of interactive fiction reveal the protagonist’s fears and desires, as well as the virtues and flaws woven through their family history. The story questions whether that violent release can ease the pain of the past or make it more intense.
