Spooky cyberpunk mystery Psychroma looks like Detention meets Observer
Back to the retro future
One of the most intriguing new announcements at today's Future Of Play event had to be Psychroma, a cyberpunk horror adventure game in the works by indie developer/publisher Rocket Adrift Games. The devs describe their game as a narrative-driven side-scroller where you play as a digital medium. Imagine something halfway between Observer and Detention, then, and you'll be on the right lines.
The trailer harks back to the point-and-click mysteries beloved of my misspent youth, which really fits in with Psychroma's whole retro futuristic vibe. It's got that clever pixel art style that looks exactly how you remember golden age adventure games looking in the '90s, which of course means that it's much, much more polished and modern than those games ever were.
In this first-look trailer our protagonist Haze wakes up on the couch in a depressing-looking apartment described as a "cybernetic house", which as far as I can make out means a cramped granny flat with what looks like a robot companion in it and a glitchy ghost in the bedroom mirror. Haze then wakes up again in the exact same way a couple more times over the course of the trailer, which has me wondering if this is going to be another time loop game. I mean, all that this game is missing to be bang on-trend right now is a time loop.
Haze's job as a digital medium, it seems, will be to identify and exorcise the literal ghost in the machine that haunts the house where all the residents (Haze included) are seemingly very stuck, psychologically if not physically. Naturally it won't be straightforward: I caught a glimpse of what looked like a very adventure game-y tarot card puzzle in that trailer, and Rocket Adrift promise a plethora of spooks and secrets to uncover as you work your way towards the truth.
Psychroma is available to wishlist on Steam right now, but with a projected release date in Q3 2023, you're in for a bit of a wait. Still though, this one looks really cool, and is definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for on RPS's behalf.
Not E3 2022 is in full-swing - see everything in our E3 2022 hub, as well as our complete round-up of everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2022. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, so make sure you stay up to date with our summer games stream schedule.