Expanding Eternally, Every Integer, Infinite
The team behind the upcoming expansive hacking-centric Metroidvania adventure Recompile just released a new featurette dedicated to showing off its exciting digital landscapes. Recompile’s virtual world is as stunning as it is otherworldly–and threatening, for that matter.
In this game, players take on the role of a semi-sapient program struggling against deletion. This simple quest will lead to the birth of sapient AI, though whether that AI will come in the form of the player character reaching true sapience or if something is left in the ancient, sprawling, 3D ruins of the Mainframe. This environmental trailer may not give any concrete answers, but it does show off some deliciously atmospheric glimpses of the game’s digital wasteland.
The featurette goes over five different environments in its one-minute run-time, each with its own unique balance of neon light and deep shadows. Text at the top left of the screen names each location and clarifies that they are all part of the Mainframe.
The featured environments include the sprawling neon Hex Databank, the hazy blue Central Exchange, the shadowy and deceptively fragile Tet Rafinery, the ominously biological Ico Biosphere, and the collection of floating platforms known as the Okt Communication. Each has some spectacular sights and what look suspiciously like unique puzzle mechanics to offer Metroidvania fans.
Recompile offers non-linear progression in true Metroidvania fashion, so it’s difficult to say where each of these locations leads to and what players will find there. If this teaser is anything to go by, we can be sure the results will be interesting to explore. And fight our way through, of course. What’s a Metroidvania without combat?
All in all, Recompile is shaping up to be a gorgeous trip into the heart of a computer, all of it taking place in a single second of real time. That’s one way to hammer in the difference between how humans and programs experience the world.
Recompile will be available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on August 19th, 2021.
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