Demo discovered for A Lost Man: Chapter I

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Full debut installment of haunting black-and-white WWI side-scrolling series coming soon to PC on Steam

There are many horrors in war. The most obvious involve the physical brutality of death and destruction, but we'll get to explore a different kind of trauma in Studio Arkos's upcoming A Lost Man: Chapter I, the debut installment of a haunting new side-scrolling adventure series. 

It's 1916, in the middle of the Great War, when an unnamed soldier is knocked unconscious in battle. When he awakens, he's all alone in the "desolate countryside" between the front lines of the conflict's opponents. Instead of trying to rejoin his unit, however, the man decides he's had enough and deserts the Army for good. But as it turns out, that's not the end of his problems, only the beginning. With no real plan other than to survive on his own, the soldier soon discovers that "death lurks everywhere" he travels in a land filled with "strange and ambiguous characters" who may help or hinder his objectives. With ghosts to contend with, both literal and figurative, it seems that perhaps he's left one kind of hell behind only to enter another, and now the only way out is through. 

A Lost Man is a side-scrolling adventure with a very distinctive look. Presented entirely in black and white, the game features a "comic book, non-realistic" art style originally drawn on paper before being digitized, which helps alleviate the shock factor of some of its more disturbing scenes. The characters all have oversized noses and covered eyes, helping to obscure any sense of identity, and there is no voice acting, only the scritching sound of handwriting whenever someone is speaking. Little is known about the main protagonist, except that he left his beloved behind in Paris to join the war (assuming the letter he carries is his own), or about the other quirky inhabitants of a place that seems both familiar and yet eerily otherworldly. 

Despite the World War I setting, there's no combat for players to concern themselves with here, as this is a traditional point-and-click adventure at heart. Instead of having full range of movement, you'll traverse a strictly horizontal plane, but the animated cursor will highlight any hotspots, exits or north/south directions you're able to move. You will collect inventory items (hidden in the thick black bar at the bottom of the screen) to combine and use in the environment, and engage in dialogue with the other characters you encounter, such as the grouchy old hermit guarding his farmhouse with a shotgun, and the overly protective priest guarding the precious sacraments in the church. Some backtracking is involved, making the double-click option to run a welcome one, and as you solve puzzles and uncover various documents shedding more light on the situation, gradually the soldier's "dark journey" will unveil its "many mysteries."

If you care to make your first foray right away, a playable demo for A Lost Man: Chapter I is available now on Steam for Windows PC, with the full version not far behind, expected sometime as early as the end of June. Although the series debut is referred to as the first of five planned "chapters," the two-man development team projects about four hours of play time with a "complete and developed narrative arc" of its own, while leaving room open for additional content to be released as DLC.

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