Project Vesperi lands on Steam for Windows PC

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo also available for cinematic, choice-driven sci-fi narrative adventure

Who says you never learn anything useful in school? Certainly not the members of Last Praetorian Interactive, who came together as students to work on a narrative adventure game demo and since graduating have refined and expanded it into a full-fledged commercial experience, the newly released Project Vesperi.

It's 2083, and humanity's divisions have seriously depleted the world's natural resources and spilled over into space exploration as well. The Unified Nations of Earth (UNE) have "launched missions across the solar system to search for signs of life on planets and moons," while the United States has reformed as the United Colonies of America and is "on a mission to colonize the stars." Against this galactic political backdrop, researchers Helen Ward and Jesse Hartwell at the UNE's Geyser Canyon Station on Venus have discovered a mysterious Geode that they believe might be an alien lifeform. As astrobiologist Evelyn Roth, you've been sent to investigate their findings, but not only must you navigate some uncomfortable interpersonal issues with the two researchers, when an armed intruder arrives to demand the Geode be turned over, it is up to you to "decide how humanity will react to what may be the greatest discovery ever made."

Project Vesperi is fully voiced and presented in crisply designed third-person, free-roaming 3D, depicting both the harsh, inhospitable mustard-hued environments of Venus and the scientific lab established there, as well as a few other locations featured in flashback. There will be some "tense action sequences" that utilize simple quick time events, but instead of fighting off the invader, it's your decision making that will impact the direction of this "branching narrative sci-fi game." As Evelyn, you must explore to find "new pathways and choices to unlock during conversations," which in turn will affect the characters you meet and determine which of ten-plus possible endings you get. Choices can be both big and small, but the most significant are literally life and death, as ultimately each character's fate depends on "how you approach conflict." A single playthrough isn't intended to be longer than "movie-length," but the game has been "built from the ground up to be replayable." Cleverly, instead of simply dropping players back to the start menu to try again, the replay mechanic has been narratively integrated by means of the Geode's unique power, giving the game a kind of Groundhog Day-in-space feel.

You can choose to start playing right away, as the full commercial version of Project Vesperi has now launched on Steam for Windows PC (playable on Steam Deck) and coming soon to Epic. If you'd like to try it out first, the original student demo can also be downloaded, representing a "snapshot" of the team's original work. 

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