If you’ve been hankering for a new Mirror’s Edge, then good news, chum – the only part of Panline that doesn’t remind me directly of Mirror’s Edge is your “Panlet” handheld comms device, which looks a hell of a lot like a PlayStation Portable.
“Spiritual sequel to DICE’s first-person parkour series, also featuring a PSP” is a combination of historical references that causes my hair to curl, my elbows to reverse, and smoke to pour from my ears. I’m just going to go hyperventilate for a while – please watch this snippet of Youtube footage.
Watch on YouTube
Panline is the work of Viridian Matters, who have pedigree for games about clambering up large glossy buildings. It casts you as a freerunner in a City governed by the Civic Flow Engine: a fully integrated “system of systems” in which “all essential and most non-essential goods are produced at zero cost”. Surely no terrible trough of blood awaits, somewhere far beneath this peroxide paradise of tiles and glass and gushing, neon water.
You’re part of “a network of couriers, fixers and data brokers driving the new attention economy, built on identity and exclusivity”. Your job is to accept gigs, pick a route, and get there without breaking anything. It looks to handle exactly like DICE’s game, with players sliding under pipes and rolling after big jumps to reduce the force of impact. “The City does not hand you its layout,” warns the Steam page. “Build your navigational skills by exploring sightlines and landmarks. Remember them. You will only have a compass to keep you oriented.”
The City is an open world, subject to a day/night cycle. You get a Runner’s Hideout where you can sleep through the day (“until you get your Night Running Pass”) and manage your gear and upgrades. Upgrades! I guess the original Mirror’s Edge didn’t have upgrades. In Panline, you can expand your inventory and invest in sturdier storage to protect more valuable cargo. You’ll also upgrade the world through your feats of fence-hurdling and assorted wall-scampery, unlocking new areas when you have the skillz and “social reach”.
“Some runs are simple handoffs, others chain into multi-stop jobs where routes and delivery conditions matter as much as time or distance,” the Steam page goes on. As for the PSP Panlet device, this lets you hack the urban infrastructure to unspecified effect. I imagine it’ll be stuff like turning construction cranes so you can use them as bridges.
Careful how you wield the thing, though – you’re liable to break your Panlet if you take a tumble. I feel this is an insult to the PSP’s robustness. True, those Universal Media Discs are as sturdy as potato chips, but the hardware itself is built like a brick shithouse. My jailbroken launch model has outlived about 10 mobile phones. I’ve never fallen off a skyscraper while playing it, mind you.
Circling back to the troughs of blood line: one difference I notice from Mirror’s Edge is the almost total absence of red from what we’ve seen of Panline’s palette. Red is important in the original Mirror’s Edge: it’s the colour of routes revealed by Faith’s runner vision, as she streaks across the skyline. Avoiding that colour feels significant, somehow, even eerie in a Backroom sort of way, though it could just be an effort to avoid getting taken to court for intellectual property infringement. Anyway, Panline launches sometime this year.
