Game

Oratorio

2023 · Linux · PC (Microsoft Windows) · Mac · Nintendo Entertainment System · Shooter · Music · Indie

About this game

Oratorio is a rhythm action rail-shooter developed for the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Primarily inspired by games like Rez, Child of Eden, and Thumper. Oratorio is a unique on-rails rhythmic shooter where players create the music of the game through interaction with the game's systems, like shooting enemies, projectiles, and powerups. Everything players do contributes to the soundscape in this innovative retro music shooting game. The game takes place in a dystopian cyberpunk future where an environmentalist hacker group launches a desperate mission to hack the servers of one of the world's largest corporations in order to steal the DNA sequences for extinct plants and animals that the corporation has copyrighted for use in virtual reality safaris. As the enigmatic hacker named Oratorio, players are the last hope for revival in a world that has gone to a digital ruin. Players control a cursor and assume a first-person perspective on an ever-expanding digital track in cyberspace.

Despite our best intentions, the world did not survive us. The coasts flooded. Mass migration displaced hundreds of millions. Food supply chains broke. People fought wars over fuel and water. Social unrest led to the collapse of most organized governments. In the wake of this ruin, the Mega Corps and their Metaverse emerged as a beacon. Life became a luxury reserved for the wealthy. And the blueprints of life, the DNA data for all flora and fauna, became a commodity owned by the most powerful Mega Corp, Nu-Li. As each species went extinct, Nu-Li coded and copyrighted its DNA. Its fiercely guarded data banks became a new, proprietary Digital Ark. While most used the Metaverse to escape the desolation of everyday life, the eco-hacker group SOL (Save Organic Life) used it to fight back. As time runs out for the world, SOL launches a desperate mission to hack Nu-Li and steal back all the copy-protected DNA data. With it, they can bring back what’s been lost. In the hacker world, you are known only as Oratorio. You are the world’s only chance for revival.