When the world ended people were stuck living with the results, either by dying on Earth or trying to pretend that it’s all ok on a barely functional Mars. Golf Club: Wasteland was a tour of a ruined planet by golfing over its remains, but it turned out Earth wasn’t quite as dead as people had thought. Billions died but not everyone, and the remaining animals and humans have adapted to the new environment. This, of course, is of great interest to the survivors on Mars, because if humans on Earth have adapted then maybe so can they. The obvious first step to researching this is to capture a survivor, one who’s grown up in the toxic haze, and seeing as it hasn’t been too many years since Earth was left behind this means the specimen will be a child. A child who would very much like to not be taken apart by anyone, much less those who abandoned him and his family as they flew away from the destruction they’d caused.
The Cub is a semi-sequel to Golf Club: Wasteland, continuing the story of a post-apocalyptic Earth. This time the adventure is more a cinematic platformer than the golfing expedition of the first game, but it still includes the the smooth-talking DJ and “apocalypse-wave” music of Radio Nostalgia from Mars. The story ties in directly with Golf Club: Wasteland but from a very different perspective and gameplay, with the action looking nicely animated with a lot of attention to the art design, from the cub’s bubble helmet to the bulky jetpacks on the returning humans. The one concern is that, nice as this looks, one of the quoted inspirations is Genndy Tarakovsky’s excellent but incredibly brutal Primal, although hopefully that’s in reference to giving space to the quiet scenes so the action is that much more intense when everything kicks off. Plus I can’t help but think there’s a bit of the old arcade game Jungle King in there too.
The Cub is coming out on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, and Switch, with no hint as to the release date quite yet. The trailer does a fantastic job of showing off the game and its animation, though, so give it a look to start anticipating whenever that might be. It’s only the end of the world for the people who lived there, after all.
