TSA checked out Dark Future: Blood Red States earlier this year:

Dark Future: Blood Red States Review

Mad Max on the streets, Judge Dredd in the sheets. 

Welcome to the year 2025, where America has transformed into a corporate hellscape of twisted capitalism where gangs roam the streets and private law enforcement gears up to take them out in the middle of a worsening fuel shortage. Maybe we’re six years away from just such a future in our own world, but as with all things dystopian and 80s, Auroch Digital have been able to blow the dust off Games Workshops’ niche Dark Future board game and make it feel about as relevant in our climate crisis present as it’s ever been.
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Summary
Dark Future: Blood Red States is a quirky video game adaptation of this niche Games Workshop board game, and Auroch Digital have done a great job of preserving that feel in a real time form. Its bitesized campaigns keep the dystopian road warrior gameplay going, and there's a real charm that manages to shine through, even if there's probably a few too many rough edges and limits to the design.

Score: 7/10

Yippee Ki Yay Mr Falcon showed off some gameplay for Dark Future: Blood Red States.

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Step into the extraordinary, dystopian world of Dark Future, a game of both action and strategy unlike any other. Let's Play Dark Future Blood Red States 2019 Gameplay!

Gamereactor have interviewed Auroch Digital's Peter Willington about Dark Future: Blood Red States (starts at 3:38).

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A sneak peak into what Dark Future: Blood Red States will look like can be found on the official web site.

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Wheels, Weapons and the Wasteland asked Tomas Rawlings of Auroch Digital quite a few questions about Dark Future: Blood Red States:

Community Manager Jake Connor of Auroch Digital, Ltd., the company producing Dark Future: Blood Red States, graciously asked if Wheels, Weapons and the Wasteland (WWW) was interested in an interview to discuss Dark Future: Blood Red States and car combat gaming. Auroch Digital, Ltd. Production Director Tomas Rawlings, Ph.D. (TR) kindly answered several questions provided by this blog.

WWW: What was your first experience with Dark Future? How long have you played the game?

TR: I started playing GW games when I was about 12 and I read White Dwarf avidly so came across it then. So this picture is from my own copy of White Dwarf that announced the upcoming game. Then one of my school friends got a copy we used to play game together on weekends and I played it soon after it came out. I loved the art, the setting so really enjoyed playing the game.

WWW: Why did you and Auroch Digital, Ltd. decide to develop an electronic game based on Dark Future, an out of print, car combat miniatures game from 1988, a title no longer supported by Games Workshop?

TR: After doing Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night, we had developed a good relationship with Games Workshop and so talked about a number of possible projects. In was in part because nobody else was doing anything that attracted me to seeing if we could get the Dark Future licence. It meant that we’d get define how that space became digital, which gives us more scope to play with the concepts and the game. Plus; chaos, meets highway warriors meets cyberpunk what’s not to love?

WWW: What are some of the aspects of Dark Future that attracted you to play the miniatures game?

TR: For me it’s the setting. I’m a huge strategy game fan and a game that has momentum as part of the gameplay adds a really cool aspect to how you play I also really like Battlefleet Gothic for similar reasons. The TL; DR would be ‘Speed’.

WWW: What are some of the aspects of Dark Future that attracted you to create an electronic version of the game?

TR: Going back though my copy of the game when we were chatting to Games Workshop I could see that there was so much promise in this game when converted to a digital format. The core problem of any boardgame game with real-world physics modeled in it is; how to make the game give you that feeling of speed, motion and space while not bogging the player down in charts and tables so much they need a degree in physics to play. I saw that we could get the computer to do all the hard things the calculations freeing the player to, well, play.

WWW: How was the name Dark Future: Blood Red States created?

TR: The main setting in the game is the middle bit of this alternative America that has become a wasteland. So I was thinking of this area as being roughly where the ‘Red States’ (a term for the geographic ‘middle’ bit of America) when you think what else is red and fits the theme of Dark Future Blood. Hence the title was born. It has other references in the story too, which players will discover.

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Game-Debate interviewed James Swallow, one of the lead writers on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Auroch Digital’s Dark Future: Blood Red States:

Interview With Dark Future: Blood Red States Chief Writer James Swallow

On the site recently we had an interview with James Swallow, one of the lead writers on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Auroch Digital’s Dark Future: Blood Red States. We’ve had a look at what we could information we could glean about Mankind Divided, but he also had plenty to say about Auroch’s post-apocalyptic tactical driving game set in the scorched earth of the American wastelands.

Based on the Dark Future tabletop board game from Games Workshop, Blood Red States is all about surviving in the badlands of America. A combination of tactical gameplay and systemic missions ensures practically guaranteed gameplay depths, but behind the scenes James Swallow is given the assignment of tying it all together with a twisting plot. 

Jon: So, Dark Future isn't your typical Mad Max clone, or Fallout. What would you say your guiding principles are for writing in that world?

James: Tonally Dark Future has a little bit of all these things. It's a little bit Mad Max, a little bit of that post-apocalyptic Fallout vibe, but I think it has a unique fusion of all these different elements. There is a nihilistic, darkly funny aspect to it. That's what makes it cool, along with cool cars and the visceral nature of high-octane action adventure, as well as a layer of very British overtones. This strange idea we have of observing American pop culture through a lens that is slightly removed from the actual American experience. I think that lends a weird flavour to it that makes it unique. It's the same sort of thing as Judge Dredd. That's a comic book wholly created in the UK but it's about this idea of a hyper-realised American sci-fi future, and I think Dark Future comes from a similar place.

Jon: How do you expect it to be perceived in the US?

James: I've never really thought about that. I think there's a flavour for it. Judge Dredd does pretty well over, and another good example of a British-eye-view on American pop culture is Grand Theft Auto. I think it'll be interesting to see how they accept it.

Jon: Will you be adopting a dark style for Dark Future?

James: Well naturally, Dark Future is quite nihilistic anyway, so that's already baked straight in. The thing about Dark Future is it's a very uniquely British, darkly comic, faintly satirical, comedic style, but also a bit twisted. All that kind of stuff is in the DNA of Dark Future, which I think speaks nicely to my style of storytelling. It's a fun world to be part of. I've already written a novel for it, Jade Dragon, back in 2006.

Because the Dark Future world is very much a throwback to the 80s, it has a pleasingly retro style to it even though it's set in the future. When I did Jade Dragon that was my love poem to 80’s cyberpunk novels and all my favourite Hong Kong action movies all rolled into one.

Jon: Did you watch Mad Max: Fury Road?

No I haven't actually.

Jon: I was going to ask if you'd attempted to stay away from it.

James: I think consciously I would try to avoid watching something like that. Now we're deep into Dark Future I think I should make an effort to watch Mad Max Fury Road, just to make sure we don't end up down the same track.

Jon: Onto Dark Future: Blood Red States itself then, and your role in helping Auroch Digital bring this world to life. Would it be best to describe you as the glue between Auroch and Games Workshop, helping the developers and the IP reach the correct balance of development vision and IP continuity, or is that entirely irrelevant to your task in writing a great story?

James: I guess the role I'm fulfilling right now is I'm narrative consultant. I'm being brought in because I've got experience with the Dark Future fictional world, and also my experience with Games Workshop doesn't hurt. I'm already part of the team over there (GW) so that smoothed things along a bit. I guess the Games Workshop guys look at me and trusted me because I've already done stuff for them. It's not like I'm a complete new guy, they've worked with me before and they know the kind of writer that I am.

The other skillset I bring to Blood Red States is I'm familiar with doing a Dark Future type story. I mean that with a little 'd' and a little 'f' rather than the franchise as a whole. I've written for cyberpunk universes like Deus Ex and Judge Dredd. All those tonally have similarities to the Dark Future world. It's a milieu I feel comfortable in writing. So I guess the role I've been filling is to make the tone work. Working with Thomas (Rawlings, head of Auroch Digital) and the guys at Auroch to translate that fictional world and layer it onto a compelling and exciting game engine to make the two things work in sync. Because often you'll see a licensed tie-in for a game and it feels like here is a game we had that we'd just slap a paint job over. To me that's where licensed games fail.

The Auroch guys are definitely interested in making sure the game reflects the world and the world reflects the game. That's when you get a good licensed tie-in, because it feels like the two things are connected as opposed to just rammed together in the hope of getting an entertaining experience.

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The website for the Dark Future: Blood Red States is open. The simultaneous turn-based strategy game is announced for winter 2015:

Dark Future was originally released as a board game in 1988, and later expanded into a series of books is is now getting a reboot from Auroch Digital. The gameplay is a furious mix of hammering chain-guns, tactical high-speed manoeuvres and the ripping of metal as vehicles smash into one another. All the action is conducted against a dark background of the decline of humanity; too wild to be true and too close for comfort.

Official Game Trailer:

In Dark Future: Blood Red States, the once dominant nation has been hollowed out by climate change, pollution, disease and corruption. If you're in the 0.1% then life is pretty good. The major cities are either corporate controlled high-tech gated communities (Patrolled Zones, or PZs) for those who can pay. If you work for the 0.1% then life is so-so as; long as the boss is happy. If you're part of the 99% then the future is bleak. Chances are you live in lawless shanty towns or decayed urban sprawl (knows as the 'NoGos'). Yet life goes on and connecting the east and west coast cities is 'The Big Empty'. What was once the breadbasket of the world is now the polluted, wasted Red States of America where vicious gangs hunt and fight. An atrophied state has all but given up trying to impose law and order here and instead relies on a new breed of bounty hunter-come highway warrior to keep the last roads open. In the big empty the law is the Sanctioned Operative.

Into this fractured new world the player must make their fortune. The player runs a Sanctioned Ops agency; taking on missions for bounty outside the PZs. They must form and run a small team of battle-hardened drivers and a garage of conflict-ready cars. When the money is right, the player's Op team will roar into action, attacking gangcults on the roads of the Big Empty in exchange for bounty. That vital bounty then pays for upgrades from front-mounted HMGs to booking a driver into the clinic for a new set of bionic eyes to give them better aim in combat. As the strength of the Sanctioned Ops team grows, so does the bounty on offer and the danger of the missions.

As if the world of 2023 was not bleak enough; behind the decay and wasting are even darker forces, setting the stage for the grand finale. The beginning of the end is nigh.