Rumbral tumbles out on PC and consoles 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo also available for side-scrolling puzzle-platformer with parallel realities on Steam 

What would you do if you woke up with no memory and seemingly the only person left on Earth? The correct answer, of course, would either be a) freak out or b) curl up into the fetal position. But that's not an option in games, so instead you'll set out to explore not one but two new realities and face whatever obstacles come your way in Rumbral, the newly released puzzle-platformer from indie Spanish developer OSEA Innovations.

You first open your eyes in the middle of a dense forest, the solitude a bit disquieting but not overly alarming – yet. As you begin familiarizing yourself with your surroundings, however, you soon discover that something is very wrong. The world has become a "dark, desolate" place filled with "abandoned structures and puzzles, perhaps left behind by others" – whether by fellow survivors or previous explorers, you don't know. In fact, you remember nothing of this place, your own identity, or how you came to be left alone here. And so, with "no tutorials or direct explanations, the game invites players to move forward by exploring, solving environmental puzzles and uncovering fragments of a story that is never fully laid out." With many obstacles in your path, the only chance of recovering your lost memories is by pushing ever onward in the hopes that the "strange magenta liquids" you find spilled everywhere hold the key to revealing "secrets of the past… and maybe of yourself."

Rumbral is a traditional atmospheric side-scroller in the vein of Limbo and Inside, with haunting low-poly artwork conveying a mysterious world that seems familiar and yet in some ways so different from our own. Controlled via gamepad or keyboard, players will move the unnamed masked character ever rightward through a series of environmental challenges, limited to ordinary physical abilities such as jumping, crouching, pushing and pulling certain objects, throwing switches and the like. The focus here is not on action but on "tension, silence and discovery," experienced at a slow pace by solving puzzles and only occasionally by fleeing or hiding from danger. Crucial to your success are the scattered puddles of brightly coloured ooze that might appear dangerous but actually "allow you to travel to another reality," a red-hued, slightly altered version of the protagonist's own. The trick, then, is to strategically "shift between these parallel worlds, altering the environment and opening new ways to progress." Answers won't come easy along the way, but in time you will begin to piece the narrative together through "memory fragments, spaces and hidden traces" of what came before.

If you're ready to jump in, you can do so right away as Rumbral has launched on Steam for Windows PC, along with console versions for PlayStation5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. If you prefer to dip a toe in to test the spillage first, you can do so as well through the playable demo available on Steam. 

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