Yellow paint; waypoints; sparkling particles lighting the path forward. According to some, modern games have become reluctant to let players off the leash. So conspicuous has the level designer’s hand become when guiding players that the fundamental act of eye-widening discovery has been dumbed down, reduced to little more than scripted vista reveals. So, what happens when you set players free, providing minimal steering in a vast and potentially confusing 3D setting? You might get a game like the indie immersive sim, Peripeteia, a thriller that trusts you to find your own way in an abyssal cyberpunk sprawl.
PeripeteiaDeveloper: Ninth ExodusPublisher: Ninth ExodusPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out on 21st February on PC early access (Steam)
Those who have become exasperated with overt hand-holding seem to be precisely the audience developer Ninth Exodus is courting. The Steam page for Peripeteia reads, “have you found yourself hungering for a sense of survival, accomplishment, and player choice long absent from this dark and belied industry?” If you nod your head along to any of that then this game (out today in early access), may be for you (and fans of 2021’s Cruelty Squad would also do well to check it out, too).
You play as Marie, a cyborg who wakes up with little recollection of herself or this near-future dystopian version of Poland. Her first mission is to track down a lucrative bulb for a junker called Filemon. Such is the frankly preposterous scale of this city it can frequently feel like you’re trying to find a needle in the haystack — searching for the key item or interaction which moves the story along. The game feels like an id Tech 3 fever dream, driven by a strange and unstable kind of logic, albeit grounded by an impressive spatial coherence.
Peripeteia Realms Deep 2022 Trailer: Returned Watch on YouTube
Alongside admirably flexible, if frustratingly janky, first-person traversal, you’ll do lots of fiddling about with one of the grottiest (complimentary) inventories I’ve ever seen in a video game, as if it has been beamed directly out of 1999’s Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, held together with little more than gaffer tape.