Demo for Closer Than You Know is here now on Steam

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Announcements by Jack Allin
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Fantastical hand-painted adventure promises a cozy, family friendly point-and-click experience in 2024

If you’ve got children (or are still a child at heart yourself, regardless of age), you'll want to take note of a family friendly “big-kid adventure game for young kids” coming in the form of So Peculiar’s Closer Than You Know.

The game stars a young woman named Sam, who is “headstrong, clever, and a little too curious for her own good.” Sam also has a “spark of creativity burning inside her,” which spells trouble on her world, where “Granican law has deemed any such talents ‘dangerous’ and ‘a threat to the Granican way of life.’” Defying these rules and imprisoned for the crime of “invention” as punishment, Sam is able to escape and discovers “the seed of an ancient magic that starts her on a quest to Earth.” There, with help from a friendly praying mantis, Sam must collect “fragments of Hope to restore life to her home planet.”

Promising a “delightful and heart-warming story” with a “cozy, updated spin” on the classic genre formula, the hand-painted Closer Than You Know has been “specifically designed to be accessible to young kids who are ready for big-kid adventures while also being fun for fans of nostalgic point-and-click adventure games.” With the help of her six-legged sidekick, aptly named Mantis, Sam will explore a variety of whimsical locales, from “the lush tropical rainforest to the frigid arctic to an actual ant farm.” These settings are filled with puzzles to solve and more than two dozen fully voiced characters just waiting to be befriended, ranging from a “bravely insecure capybara to an eccentric old scientist with an unusual power.”

The full version of Closer Than You Think is a bit further off than its title implies, with launch not expected until sometime in 2024, but to help tide you over, a playable demo is already available on Steam for Windows and Mac.