If I ever go looking for my significant other and find myself inside a planet-sized megamind that’s on the verge of gaining consciousness, I will not run around zapping the cerebral fauna with my magic handcannons. I will not jump on or scan anything. Instead, I will heed the lessons of Harlan Ellison and curl regretfully into a ball, awaiting my transformation into a puddle of mournful goo.
It’s one of many ways I apparently differ from the protagonist of Etre, a new third-person action adventure from Studio Lifeforms, in which you “explore an interconnected labyrinth of luminous architecture, solve spatial puzzles, and engage in fluid combat as you search for your lost love and decide what this new intelligence will become.”
I’ve been keeping Etre in reserve like a health potion, after reading about it on cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer. Etre has lovely colours. It’s the perfect antidote to, for example, a day’s worth of writing about layoffs and generative AI. It’s colourful partly because it’s based on “the visionary science fiction of 1970s and ’80s European graphic novels”, in addition to Remedy’s rather more officious-looking Control. Here’s a trailer.
Watch on YouTube
In Etre, you are a caped starjumper called Xyle. He’s sort of the Silver Surfer but with his skin set to shuffle. He’s come to Orbis, the aforesaid cosmic intelligence, in search of his soulmate Atel. Orbis isn’t just a bunch of squelching neon neurones. It’s home to whole societies, including two factions who are at war. There’s also a network of “angel tech” that has become corrupted, giving rise to “living geometry” that wants to kick your ass. You must exploit terrain features and learn behaviours to prevail, acquiring new abilities over time that let you reach new areas. Wait, I think this could be the first acceptable usage of the marketing term “metroidbrainia”.
You’ll also do a bunch of object scanning to unlock lore documents and get a sense of the awakening psyche you’re traversing. I quite like the looks of this – it reminds me of Metroid Prime. “Your choices and discoveries shape what Orbis will become,” the Steam page notes. “A living world brought back into balance, a transcendent god-mind, or something far more terrifying.” Who knows, perhaps getting turned into a puddle of goo is on the cards, after all.
There’s no release date yet. I guess one parallel for this could be Double Fine’s Psychonauts games, with their motley inner worlds that need to be bounced and teleblasted into a state of wellness.