From Ruins currently under construction for 2027 release

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

New sci-fi mystery adventure announced by the creators of Lacuna and Between Horizons

Every few years, DigiTales Interactive treats us to a new futuristic sci-fi detective mystery to sink our teeth into, starting with Lacuna in 2021 and Between Horizons in 2024. For 2027, the indie German studio has another pixel art investigation in store for us, called From Ruins, and this time they'll be doing the publishing on their own. 

As is the developer's habit, plot details are scarce for now, but players assume the role of a detective in a "post-apocalyptic world." You'd think things couldn't get worse than that, but you also find yourself caught in the middle of a decades-old feud that "began at the end of the world." It's your job to uncover the truth behind this conflict, but the stakes aren't just professional, they're personal as well – indeed, your very "fate depends on it." To find answers you'll need to "gather clues, establish connections, and solve a series of increasingly challenging cases." However, the more deeply you investigate, the "more hidden interests are laid bare as friends and foes reveal themselves" in a "fast-paced" story that promises to be "full of twists and turns." To succeed you must "pay close attention to the information you gather from various clues and people, and subsequently draw logical conclusions to answer a host of different questions." Ultimately, it will be up to you to decide whether humanity can "be trusted with its greatest achievement, or [if] will it inevitably lead us all into ruins once again."

Returning to the purely 2D format of Lacuna rather than the 2.5D approach in Between Horizons, From Ruins is another side-scrolling adventure presented in stylish, moodily atmospheric pixel art. The new game keeps everything that fans enjoyed about its acclaimed predecessors, including core gameplay that "revolves around collecting evidence [and] interviewing NPCs " within a branching story with "meaningful decisions that test the player’s moral compass." That said, there will be some "notable deviations to the formula" this time around. Largely inspired by the Golden Idol series, here the case sheets you'll need to complete are "more elaborate than ever before," requiring you to fill in "the nouns and verbs to form sentences that best answer the question posed." To do that, you'll first need to collect specific words from the environment and character interrogations to use in your deductions. Another new addition will be short, "somewhat self-contained" mini games and brain teasers for variety, which will "always advance your investigation in one way or another" upon solving them. 

According to the developer's blog, From Ruins is already "virtually feature-complete and free of bugs, with a large part of the campaign already finished." However, with a small team assuming its own publishing duties this time as well, they still anticipate a 2027 release on Steam for Windows PC, in part to account for much more extensive testing than their previous games.