Jett: The Far Shore is an immersive sim about scouting an alien world
Look, but don't touch
Jett: The Far Shore is a game about making sense of the unfamiliar. It's the second game from Sword & Sworcery EP devs, Superbrothers, and your character, Mei, is part of a team of explorers looking for a planet to inhabit. The world you're on has its own interconnected ecosystem, one that you need to examine and exploit while trying to discover the source of a mysterious signal. Jett wants you to work out how to be part of the world without destabilising it. Your little team aren’t there to gather resources to make your journey easier. You’re there to learn.
To succeed, you need to understand how each animal works within the context of the world, and even flee if you must. But you do need to approach the creatures and plants to ensure you know what makes them tick. Your jett’s tools include dazzle lights instead of blasters, and a mechanical grapple to grasp, drag, and throw large objects.
Jett’s also about traversing a landscape, the excitement of being a scout ship zipping through long grass, boosting into the air and over obstacles as you seek out more of the world.
I’m looking forward to this. A lot of games let you scan and catalogue alien creatures, but they’ll often stop there. Jett looks to go further. Your team will learn how to lure predators, how to combine elements, and how to turn one plant’s defences to your advantage while trying to escape from a pursuer.
Randy Smith, whose game Waking Mars feels like a prototype for this, is also collaborating on Jett, alongside several other developers (see their website for the full list), and music is being provided by Oxenfree composers SCNTFC. Though it was demoed on a Playstation during last night's State Of Play stream, it'll be out on PC, too. Likely by the end of the year.