If you’ve been enjoying Jusant, Don’t Nod’s post-apocalyptic climbing sim, you might also like the alpha playtest for Chasing The Unseen, which has just been updated with a new level. It doesn’t have Jusant’s quietly innovative grip and abseiling mechanics – the climbing is closer to Shadow Of The Colossus, consisting of just one button you hold to cling on till your stamina runs out. Nor does it have the Don’t Nod game's beautifully nested chunks of backstory - no seashells you can press your ear to, alas. But it does have massive flying cephalopods, giant red mushrooms, and floating, fractured landscapes of rock and grass.
The gameworld drifts whimsically between categories, neither macroscopic nor microscopic, at times a kind of ocean reef, and at other times, a mysterious, alternate dimension we might summarise as “Cthulhu’s Zen Chillout Room”. The climbing aside, you can glide short distances by inflating what looks like a blowfish, and there are (regular-sized) capybara to chase down and collect. When you die, the game plays a didgeridoo at you in a faintly jocular way. The whole thing pongs of quantum physics.
]]>