The only places where you can save your game are the stone circle on the central island and the boats which ferry you from one biome to another. On a moment-by-moment basis, then, it's a game about finding the things you need and then plotting how best to either sneak past the robots to get them (really hard) or defeating the robots in combat (also really hard). There are also steel traps, which can hold a robot in place, and - if you're really lucky - weapons with which to destroy them. You'll also find things that can help you distract those beastly automatons, such as stones and bottles that can be thrown, as well as more elaborate diversions like alarm clocks and toy trains. In amongst the mouldy boots and human skulls, you'll find bottles of sherry, flasks of tea and chocolate biscuits (which are both "usable" and "dunkable" according to the text descriptions). The nature of that loot is suitably skewed by the game's Anglican aesthetic. Your health will regenerate slowly, provided your vitality is kept high by eating. Basically, everywhere you need to go, the robots have got there first. The robots also congregate near buildings, which act as the game's loot chests. These fragments - visible by plumes of smoke - are always guarded by the insufferable Victorian robots who patrol the land, wittering on about the weather and taxes as they go. It's a goal that is immediately understandable, but realising it is much harder than it seems. You're trapped on an archipelago of five islands and must find 17 crystal fragments to power a mystical stone circle that can return you home. Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a survival game, but where most of the other entries in this suddenly overcrowded genre tend to be weighed down with systems - crafting, building, fortifying - Big Robot's entry has an arcade-style simplicity. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. Like UK Independence Party leader Farage, they embody a cartoonish, fantasy version of Englishness: a sort of tweedy, gentrified celebration of warm beer, milky tea and striding across moorlands with a shotgun. The robots which stalk you across the bleak landscapes of Sir, You Are Being Hunted are, basically, Nigel Farage crossed with The Terminator. Yet indie developer Big Robot may have just created the most terrifying foe of all. Games have given us many iconic monsters, from Doom's Imps to Silent Hill's Pyramid Head.
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