Years ago, I had this dream where I was parkouring through a greatly sunken version of Venice, no doubt sourced from the many hours I put into Assassin’s Creed 2 as a teen who should have been studying for their GCSEs a lot more than they were. It’s stuck with me after all this time mostly because of how much I wanted to capture that feeling again somehow, as the real Assassin’s Creed didn’t quite cut it. And lo and behold, there I was today browsing Bluesky when I came across Boars in Rome, a Mirror’s Edge and Counter Strike Surf inspired parkour platformer set in a dystopian version of Rome.
Truthfully, witnessing the clip I’ve shared below was baffling to me. “This is what I dreamt of!” More or less, anyway, for the setting isn’t quite the same; “You have been selected to start a new life off planet. Earth has been abandoned,” explains the game’s Steam page. “Machines keep working and nature claims what remains. Find out what happened while you were frozen in time by exploring the remnants of Rome where historical monuments mix with futurist megastructures.”
Mirrors Edge x Counter Strike Surf where you parkour on anything!
Be smooth n stylish in dystopian Rome. Or just jump around and explore, whatever works for you.
It’s called Boars in Rome!
#PitchYaGame
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— Benji Savage (@ceplok.bsky.social) November 6, 2026 at 12:05 PM
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Not all of it matches that dream of mine, some of it leans much more into brutalism than the typical, much older architecture you’d expect of Rome, but it’s there nonetheless. In motion, Boars in Rome feels quite oneiric too. There is so much more control over the game’s avatar than what my real body is capable of, or wants to do. You can run, jump, slide and wallrun, positioning it quite closely to VHOLUME mechanically. Where it differs is in its additives, movement tech like being able to swing on lampposts or vault over low down obstacles.
VHOLUME is more of a game about providing you with a simple toolkit and leaving you to push it to its maximum. Boars in Roam is a touch more expressive, and I’d dare to even call it an immersive sim. The levels you can romp around are linear, you have an end point to reach, only the journey is up to you. It certainly feels appropriate to put it in the im sim camp given that, at least the game’s first level, calls to mind Viktor Antonov’s work on Dishonored (and Half-Life 2, too, honestly).
As it currently stands, there’s no release date for Boars in Rome, but there is a playtest you can sign up and gain immediate access to if you fancy a go yourself; you can do so on Steam right here, or at least pop it a wishlist.