Howard Philips Lovecraft’s unnerving and vexing physique of labor has been a wellspring of inspiration for videogames, with all the things from Quake to Bloodborne cribbing not less than somewhat from the granddaddy of cosmic horror.
Desolatium by Superlumen is trying like one other worthwhile entry within the Lovecraftian videogame corpus. A primary-person point-and-click journey with pre-rendered environments extremely paying homage to Myst, it is being made with VR in thoughts, however can also be playable in the usual keyboard-mouse-and-monitor configuration most popular by god-fearing avid gamers in all places.
I attempted each the standalone “Prologue” launched final June and a demo of the complete recreation Superlumen put out on the finish of December and I used to be actually impressed. The pre-rendered backgrounds are primarily based on images of actual areas, and so they’re paying homage to the identical type of scenes from ’90s journey video games and RPGs, however in ultra-high fashionable decision. It is as if that model of presentation by no means went out of vogue, however saved evolving, much like the remedies Pillars of Eternity or Octopath Traveler gave to their respective genres.
Each playable parts of Desolatium are atmospheric and unnerving, and the bizarro-world Mediterranean village of the Prologue contrasts properly with the sterile workplace constructing interiors of the newer demo.
True to its journey recreation roots, the trail ahead is usually a little esoteric at occasions, and the stiff voice-overs and occasional textual content typos replicate some points with the interpretation from the builders’ native Spanish. For me, personally, that simply lends the sport an additional retro, pulpy appeal, however your mileage might differ.
I am trying ahead to Desolatium’s full launch, which is tentatively set for someday this spring.
