Demo unearthed for Cosmic Void's Midnight Saturn

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Sci-fi pixel art mystery from the creator of Devil's Hideout and Neon Hearts City coming to PC next spring

After treating us to one sci-fi-steeped mystery earlier this year with Neon Hearts City, Cosmic Void is planning to put players in a different pair of gumshoes for the indie studio's upcoming next project, Midnight Saturn.

Fifty years from now, on the East Coast of the United States, a high-profile lawyer who specialized in protecting celebs was shot sixteen times in cold blood. A known "slimeball," the victim had plenty of enemies and yet the police seemed unwilling to pursue the case, suspiciously feeling like a cover-up. Even the man's own daughter Lucy, who despised him, seems "indifferent to justice." And so three months after the murder, a grizzled, cynical private eye named Simm Gurnett is hired by the deceased's sister Patricia to pick up a trail long since gone cold. Just in the nick of time, it seems, as Simm soon discovers that "something big is about to happen [and] whatever it is... it goes live at midnight." It turns out the lawyer's death was "only an opening move" in an ongoing conspiracy, and that "the assassin is far from finished." Even more shocking is that "the killer is rumored to be not of this world."

While the names and places may have changed, Midnight Saturn wisely doesn't break what wasn't broke, so fans of the developer's previous games (Devil's Hideout, Twilight Oracle and more) should have a good idea of what to expect. As with most of its predecessors, this game is presented in stylish third-person pixel art with a simple point-and-click control scheme. Many if not all scenes will be limited to just a single screen, with travel between them achieved via quick travel map. Populating each location will be plenty of people (including psychics and the occasional mutant) to meet and items to collect and combine or use in the environment to solve puzzles. The tone will be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, promising to "sidestep into humor" to lighten the mood at times, though at its core the game explores some deeper themes like "identity and human connection in a world where truly knowing someone, and being known, is becoming increasingly rare." 

It'll likely be next spring at the earliest before we see the full version of Midnight Saturn – with a potential crowdfunding campaign for voice-overs before then – but you can sample its wares right away in the playable demo available now on Steam and itch.io for Windows PC.