Biggest handcrafted open world ever coming to Switch, PC and Mac on 11th October

Manchester, UK, 3rd October 2019: Silk, which features the biggest handcrafted open world of all time, is launcing on Nintendo Switch, Steam and Itch.io on 11th October. It is also available to pre-order on Nintendo Switch tomorrow (4th October) with a 20% discount.

Chris Bateman, designer of Silk, will be at PLAY Expo Blackpool on 12th October, the day after launch, to talk about the game and his distinguished career working on more than 50 games.

Award-winning game designer Chris Bateman has been writing and designing games since the 16-bit consoles and has now worked on over fifty published games, most of them with his acclaimed game design and narrative consultancy International Hobo Ltd. His first game as lead designer and writer was Discworld Noir, and his most recent titles are the PlayStation VR game The Persistence, Shadows: Awakening, Tropico 6, and the just-released indie game, Silk, which pays tribute to 1980s British bedroom coding legend Mike Singleton.

Game Details

Silk: a new exploration RPG from the designer of Discworld Noir

Enter the biggest handcrafted open world of all time, fifty times larger than Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall! Explore three million square miles of uncharted terrain from Roman Damascus to Three Kingdoms China in an exploration RPG that transports you onto the Ancient Silk Road of 200AD as an intrepid traveller or a ruthless conqueror.

From a parallel dimension where they still make keyboard-controlled, square-based RPGs in 2019 comes the new game from Chris Bateman (Discworld Noir, Ghost Master, Heretic Kingdoms). Can you puzzle out the secrets of the four distinct challenges await you in Silk?

• Explore the vast expanse of the Silk Road in an epic journey across dangerous wilderness as The Traveller.
• Overthrow Rome’s greatest enemy, the powerful Parthian Empire, as The Rebel.
• Master the art of raiding to capture the fortunes of rival kingdoms as The Warlord.
• Carve out a trading empire between the brutal battlegrounds of the Silk Road as The Noble.
• One colossal world, four unique challenges. Do you have what it takes to master Silk?
• Level up any seven of the thousands of Advisors in the game as you hire your perfect party, each of which unlocks hundreds of unique choices in the world
• Battle, Trade, or Explore: play the game your way as you amass a well-provisioned caravan or build your own renegade army
• Discover the lost genre of tile-based RPGs (Eye of the Beholder, The Bard’s Tale) remastered for the twenty first century

Developed by ihobo games, a new team founded by industry veteran and narrative design guru Chris Bateman, Silk will launch this September on Nintendo Switch, PC and Mac, with Huey Games handling publishing duties.

“This is a game I’ve wanted to make for most of my career, but it never felt like the right time.” said award-winning game designer Chris Bateman, Founder of award-winning consultancy International Hobo Ltd. “There’s never been a stronger fanbase for innovative and unusual indie games, and Silk is just not like anything else out there – it reboots the lost genre of the exploration RPG for the 21st century, and offers everyone the chance to take an amazing journey on the Ancient Silk Road.”