If you like Bioshock’s city, Dishonored’s powers and Lies Of P’s robots, check out Welcome To Brightville

Some video games aim to pull originality from the ether, and some video games try to accomplish it by theatrically amassing a bunch of rad parallels and sort of crushing them together until the molecular boundaries give way, and a new Element is produced. This is the vibe I get from Welcome To Brightville, a new “emergent immersive sim” that reminds me instantly of Thief, Dishonored, Bioshock and recent soulslike Lies Of P.

The setting blends “industrial Victorian architecture, neo-baroque extravagance, and futuristic cyberpunk elements” to produce a “manapunk” world in which magic and machinery jostle together like cats in a bag. It’s a heady stew of references, and perhaps not that novel for a dark fantasy RPG – people have been slopping the cyber over other literary genres for a while now, and don’t get me started on the abundance of -punk derivatives. Still, it rattles and whirrs along convincingly enough in the below announcement trailer.

In Welcome To Brightville you are a spell-slinging automaton roving a city controlled by a villainous AI who looks like a dark elf John Lemmon, going by the hologram in the video. The Beatles parallel isn’t entirely frivolous, for this is a world defined by music. “Actions are emphasized by the soundtrack, making combat and movement feel fluid and immersive,” notes the Steam page. “Characters sing, incorporating musical elements into the story.” Was that… GlaDOS I heard yodelling through the PA system earlier?

Not everybody in Brightville is a crooner – just as well, because as far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on whether singing NPCs are a positive cultural development or the final stroke of decadence that will lead to us wallowing amongst the rats. The fritzing, headless phantoms on the corners don’t appear to sing, and nor do the spiderbot sentinels. I can imagine that clockwork Bill Sikes at the end of the trailer grinding out some Gilbert and Sullivan, though.

Welcome To Brightville’s combat is all about magic, with players casting hexes using either of your twitchy Terminator mitts. “Your arsenal consists of offensive and defensive magical spells that can be combined to create devastating effects and manipulate the environment,” the Steam page goes on. “From elemental explosions to intricate spell interactions, combat is fast, dynamic, and highly customizable.”

If you’re more of an arcane trickster or a bard than a battlemage, you can also make headway via stealth and “manipulation”, tinkering with the environment or talking to NPCs with branching storylines. It’s hard to build up a picture from the trailer – which makes the game look like an intricately embroidered corridor shooter, I must confess – but it sounds like they have the usual imsim bases covered.

The developers are Contrast Games, who are based in Kazakhstan and have previously specialised in porting – this appears to be their first major in-house creation. It’s slated for release on PC in 2027. One to watch while you carry the torch for Dishonored 3.