During the Future of Play Direct Showcase, developer Rocket Adrift, who previously made Raptor Boyfriend, and Order a Pizza, announced their new game Psychroma, a narrative driven psychedelic horror side-scroller. In it, you play as a digital medium who has to deal with the ghost of past residents of a haunted cyberpunk commune after mysteriously waking up there. The game intends to tell a socially relevant story by embracing a queer narrative.
During the Future of Play Direct Showcase, the revealed trailer definitely gives off a psychedelic impression, filled with Cyberpunk-esque bright warping colors and a simultaneously gloomy horror appearance. Check out the trailer for yourself below!
As Sloane Smith, developer at Rocket Adrift puts it in a press release, “With Psychroma, we are interested in exploring a queer narrative through the genre of horror, where marginalized voices are so seldom heard.” But you don’t even really need that statement to realize their goal with this game, because Psychroma makes no attempt to hide any of that. As a non-binary, mixed-race protagonist it is your goal to uncover the relationship between a trans woman and her disabled lesbian partner. Simultaneously, you’re looking to escape from the mysterious place you find yourself in, by exploring space and time. You do all of that by using a set of digital tarot cards that contain the memories of the ghosts that previously lived here, who will help you to navigate the house and uncover its disturbing secrets.
The game has already won second place in the Big Indie Pitch and received an honorable mention in the Ubisoft Indie Series presented by National Bank. Rocket Adrift’s Psychroma is set to release on both Windows and Mac during the final quarter of 2023 with additional plans for releases on all major consoles.
Sticking with horror, a new Layers of Fear instalment was announced at Summer Game Fest.
