Demo dug up for Dyer Expedition

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

First-person Antarctic adventure inspired by Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness coming September 19th

H.P. Lovecraft is the gift that keeps on giving to adventure fans. The latest game inspired by the master of cosmic horror is Dyer Expedition, an upcoming first-person thriller from solo Austrian developer Monkeys With Jobs.

The year is 1931, and an expedition led by Professor William Dyer was sent by the Miskatonic University of Massachusetts to Antarctica, one of the world's "last great scientific frontiers," in order to "excavate fossils and find concrete evidence for scientific hypotheses about the land." Unfortunately, contact with the team was lost months after their arrival. When you learn that the next scheduled supply ship returned to "an all-but-abandoned base camp, you fear the worst – and an inexplicable sense of dread begins to take hold." With the university offering no support for what they consider a "suicidal" rescue attempt, you take it upon yourself to "begin a rogue mission to find out what happened to the team." After making your way to Australia, you manage to find passage on a fishing boat that drops you at your destination and promises to return in 48 hours. You now have two days to "uncover the truth before your only way home leaves without you."

Although not a direct adaptation, Dyer Expedition is heavily inspired by Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness. Controlled by either keyboard or gamepad and described as a "puzzle adventure game with light Lovecraftian horror elements," it's a first-person, free-roaming adventure with a decidedly low-res 3D look – or not. By default the game has a highly pixelated aesthetic, but you can adjust the settings to a more modern appearance instead (to a point). Either way, you can expect plenty of snow and imposing otherworldly ruins along the way, with only scattered notes from the missing expedition left behind to guild you. You'll also encounter items you can pick up and carry, such as shovels and ladders, as well as a variety of puzzles that "guard the path deeper into the ice," requiring careful observation of clues in the environment – and occasionally some good old-fashioned trial and error. All this is complemented by an original "haunting soundtrack" and ambient effects designed to heighten the sense of desperate isolation amidst inclement weather conditions. 

The full version of Dyer Expedition is scheduled to get underway on September 19th. In the meantime, you can take your first tentative steps via the playable demo available now to download from Steam or itch.io for Windows and Linux.