If you’ve been playing Blue Prince and thinking, ah, this could really benefit from having approximately 16.7 million fewer colours and a couple more homicidal husks in diving suits, may I usher you wincingly towards Repose. It’s a moodalicious, monochrome dungeon-crawler in which you get 50 in-game steps to search hideously dishevelled techno-crypts for oxygen cylinders, before you die of exhaustion. More likely, you will die of getting shot by a zombie astronaut. Here’s a trailer.
Watch on YouTube
Like Blue Prince, Repose invites you to make use of a notepad. Unlike Blue Prince, this isn’t because you’ll be jotting down clues about winsome dartboard puzzles. It’s because the game doesn’t have a save system. It has save codes, instead. Ah, save codes. Once a routine video game design convenience, now the province of the utter sadist. There are, at least, permanent progression elements such as doors you can unlock from the other side.
The grid-based format and 50-step limit might lull you into thinking that Repose is a turn-based game. It isn’t. If you see a threat, you’ve got a second to either flinch away or belt it with your fireaxe. The axe is one of two starting possessions in the demo, which is still live on Steam. The other is a glowstick, which lends a gorgeously chiselled glimmer to your surroundings but also makes you visible from a whole ‘nother tile away. Try not to equip it absent-mindedly. There are guns in the screenshots, but I’ve yet to acquire one.
The demo doesn’t dig deep into the story, but what’s here pongs of corpo-dread and existential horror. The first location in the game is called Cafe Void – bet the coffee’s good there. Your employer is simply The Company. There’s a character who warns you not to sleep in any beds you encounter, which is not helpful in a game where you can only take 50 paces before keeling over. In the undeniably existential confines of my flat, 50 paces is good for… three, maybe four midnight toilet round-trips. My flat doesn’t harbour any astronaut husks, mind. Not since the landlord put his foot down about couch surfers.
Repose launches today. Read more on Steam. Alternatively, try Void Stranger – it has a similar vibe but is (so far) sexier and weirder and marginally less punitive, providing you accept that ‘failing’ your first run is desirable.
