The future is TECHNOLOGY. Or is it?
What Dryft City Kyngs conveys through its uncomfortable ambience is a keen understanding of the effects MEGACORP and AI technology have on the middle and lower class. While the City is flourishing with futuristic technology like BDAT (an AI with biometric scanning connecting you to the information superhighway) and Mo (a mushroom-like intelligent user interface), the residents are still impoverished. Your boss pushes for higher profit and workload, while severely under-paying you and mistreating your co-workers. The everyday citizen sees limited improvement in their quality of life, while the higher-ups are raking in more and more cash and spending it on flashier technology.
The result is akin to a strange acid trip, where nothing looks quite right, but the longer you stare at it, the less sense it makes
Satire can and will be used against you
However, despite its dismal conditions, Dryft City’s heart is still beating. Undeterred by the CEO’s syphoning money from its streets, the community comes together under one banner: Dryft Racing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what walk of life you come from, every citizen in Dryft City Kyngs has their foot on the pedal, fanging for first place.
It’s this shared passion for racing that encourages you to get to know even the most off-putting citizens. The more characters you connect with, complete favours for and race against improves your Mad Respect, and you’ll need that if you want to be Dryft City’s Kyng. The distaste you might have towards the shady guy at the corner, the lazy general store cashier, or disrespectful teens, soon subsides and is replaced with familiarity and kinship.
It is clear the extreme caricatures of Melbourne stereotypes, blunt and confronting in their nature, are being used against you because once you delve deeper into your relationship with other characters, you’ll find your intuition about them wrong from the beginning. Dryft City Kyngs forces players to check their own biases. Don’t judge too soon, because, at the end of the day, they’re another person, just like you.