Demo offers first glimpse of Angelgaze

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Announcements by Jack Allin
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SCUMM-styled, 80s-inspired "extremely brainy" sci-fi adventure unveiled for PC

What type of personality are you? ENTP? ISFJ? ESFP? If you've never taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, these abbreviations may seem foreign to you, but character types and other philosophical principles are essential components of the upcoming retro-styled sci-fi adventure Angelgaze, by solo developer RetroKissGames.

The government has gone to great lengths to conceal a hollowed-out mountain and imposed a "100 mile no fly zone over a deserted former party town." It's there that the scientific genius Dr. Crowe begins conducting an experiment whose rich evangelical donors believe to be a "fulfillment of prophecy." Enter Kian, a young intel operative and amateur novelist. Kian is "ENTP-ish" (that's Extravert Intuition Thinking Perceiving...ish) who is called upon to protect Joanna, a "nerdy INFP (Introvert Intuition Feeling Perceiving) girl who is more than she appears." Kian was hired for his "ability to decipher people and handle sensitive situations," and these skills will be seriously "put to the test when his own weaknesses are confronted." Together he and Joanna will "travel in a way that no one has ever imagined possible," but time is running out, and even the possibility of success raises the question of whether humans are actually capable of dealing with this kind of power or whether our "minds [are] too feeble."

Angelgaze has been heavily inspired by the 1980s cult classics of TV and film like Back to the Future, Scanners, and Knight Rider, as well as games such as The Dig, Loom, Zak McKracken, Codename: ICEMAN and more. It wears its period inspiration proudly on its sleeve, from its depiction of fashion, hairstyles and other nostalgic objects, to a SCUMM-styled verb interface, to the "distinctive retro look of the garish EGA 16-color palette" with a "synthwave-ish vibe." The game is even framed on-screen as if being played on an old CRT monitor. The tone is decidely serious, exploring themes such as "psychology, government conspiracy and space dominatrix, in roughly equal parts," as well as "the possible overlap of existence, consciousness and mathematics from an informed scientific and philosophical perspective." It also promises a specific emphasis on "personality types, political and institutional biases, sociological context and Jungian shadow." If that all sounds like heady stuff, it's no accident, as the developer aims to make an "extremely brainy" game that extends past the "deep and complex" narrative to the gameplay itself. In addition to the usual collection and use of inventory items, there will also be a "'thinking' type of puzzle based on combining facts, drawing conclusions and revising those conclusions based on new evidence, which then enables the character to think of new actions to undertake."

There is no target release date for Angelgaze just yet, but if you're still having trouble wrapping your mind around it all, you can check it out first-hand through the playable demo available on Steam (for Windows PC only) or itch.io for Windows, Mac and Linux. The demo will drop you into the action knowing as little as Kian and Joanna, who are only just meeting – seemingly for the first time – in an unknown environment with no knowledge of how they got there.