A NEW video game set in Cornwall lets you fight fish and drink pints of Rattler.

A Cornish indie development studio is digitising the Duchy, with its new video game Brine. Falmouth-based Whalefall Games is capturing Cornwall as it has never been seen before, a playground which has seen a mutated, violent uprising of local seafood surging from the depths, claiming the coast for themselves - and its your job to keep them at bay.

For many gamers across the region, the upcoming release of GTA VI will be the highlight of their year, however, while they wait they can now dive into a game set a little closer to home.

A small team, Whalefall Games was inspired by Cornish culture and language, which inevitably led to the birth of Brine.

Cornish Game Brine
The Whalefall Games team initially developed the game as a university project before taking it full time (Whalefall Games)

Andy Aksu, the game’s art director, told us: “Brine is a visceral, fast paced, Doom-like Boomer Shooter, set along the Cornish Coast.

“You play the disgruntled fisherman as these mutated Bucca - from Cornish legend - are coming from the ocean to take your homeland, and you have to stop them fro doing so.

“As a team, we refer to Cornwall as England’s older brother. We have such a deep respect for the region, but Cornwall, for the most part, has very much been neglected in the gaming sphere, so we wanted to bring Cornish culture and Cornish language to the game.

“It features some iconic Cornish locations, which we hope we can bring to a wider audience - we’ve had a lot of Americans and Canadians really getting into it!”

However, while Cornwall may be traditionally represented in media as a land of adventure and peace, the team wanted to take the game in a slightly different direction in retro FPS (first-person shooter) style.

Brine Cornish Video Game
The game features a number of familiar Cornish icons and landscapes (Whalefall Games)

“Boomer Shooters is a genre which we’re all really familiar with, classic games like Quake, Half Life, and Doom,” continued Andy. “ And we felt that maybe Cornwall was lacking that. It’s like this crossroads between quite niche, very kitsch, almost retirement era, with cute little landscapes, versus the very visceral which is seen in Boomer Shooters like Cruelty Squad and Ultrakill.”

The project first started as part of the group’s university studies, however, after winning the Industry Award at Games Expo, the group decided to take the games development full time.

Now gamers are able to ‘gut, fillet, and fry’ their way through two levels which have been released as an early demo. Players can consume scones and Rattler to gain life, while armed with their ‘ghoul foot’ rifle mimicking the look of a seagull’s leg, and a portable deep-fryer, allowing them to literally batter their enemies.

“We’re tentatively aiming to release next year, but we can’t say much more than that at this point,” said Andy. “People can play the demo now, which is available on Steam, and they can join oir discord to chat to the devs, report any bugs and tell us how much you love the game!”