Out of Body set for debut release later this year

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Two-part classic-styled supernatural adventure series unveiled for Windows, Mac and Switch

While some near-death survivors claim to have had an out-of-body experience, those people ain't got nuthin' on the protagonist of the upcoming adventure series by indie developer Redemptive Studios, very aptly named Out of Body. 

James was just an ordinary man in 1990s San Francisco, never settling down to have a family, a house, or even a steady job, making ends meet as a freelancer. He was the sort of person you'd never really notice, as if he were a ghost... and then one day, he WAS. Not dead, just an ethereal spirit who wakes up without a physical body anymore. Adding insult to injury, "no one seems to notice he’s disappeared," leaving James to aimlessly wander the city for months, from "the piers, to Chinatown, onto the Haight District and back, hopeless and without purpose." Then, just when it seems that he's bound to drift through un-life for eternity, James stumbles upon a warehouse and "discovers a form of electronic interference that transfers him to different outposts around the world." What he finds there is even more shocking, as each destination is home to "another ghost in exactly the same predicament." Some are "overjoyed to see another spirit like them," while others are much less receptive to James, but ALL of them possess and jealously guard a body part. Believing these body parts to be "their only hope at normal life again," the ghosts will not give them up easily, so you'll need to outsmart them if you're to help James "get his body back and live a life worth knowing."

As befits a game set in the 1990s, Out of Body is a retro-styed point-and-click pixel art adventure with a kind of slimmed-down SCUMM verb interface. Inspired by the Golden Era greats like Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island, as well as modern classics like Gemini Rue and Kentucky Route Zero, the game promises a variety of locations to explore, beginning in the City by the Bay before teleporting players around the globe from the "Siberian winter woods, to rural Wisconsin, Indian hill stations, and Tokyan nightlife." There will be items to collect and puzzles to solve, so fortunately, unlike normal ghosts, James has the ability to manipulate the physical world, for reasons the developers tease are beyond the laws of science and more a matter of something "immeasurable, immaterial, and unexplainable" that will reveal itself in time. The goal for James at each stop is to "find a way to rob each spirit of their body part in order to put his back together." To do that, however, he must first come to understand what caused them to lose their own bodies in the first place, and then deal with the emotional and ethical fallout of "seizing the little hope the others have left." 

It's an ambitious plan for a small team working remotely, with five main locations across several different continents populated by fully voiced characters, so they are currently planning a two-part release: Act I will come first, followed by a DLC installment that includes Acts II and III together. If all goes well, we should see the series debut as early as December, with a "short vertical slice demo" planned to support a small crowdfunding campaign before then that will help finish production. To learn more about Out of Body in the meantime, be sure to check out the official website and wishlist it on Steam, where it will launch for Windows and Mac, along with a console version for Nintendo Switch.