Demo offers sneak peek at The Last Exam 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Time-looping point-and-click watercolor adventure unveiled for Windows and Mac on Steam

We've all had it: that dream about a test we aren't prepared for, awakening from it in a cold sweat, only to collapse back with relief that it wasn't real. But at least those are just dreams. The star of Neslihan Aydınoğlu's upcoming The Last Exam has a much bigger problem that he's fated to experience over and over again. 

The game starts, as so many games do, with a young man on a beach talking to a sentient pineapple. Then things get weird. You see, subconscious thoughts of talking fruit aside, Dylan is a young man "reliving the day of his final exam, a day that refuses to stay ordinary." To figure out why this is happening to him, and hopefully break the cycle for good, players must guide Dylan through an adventure that moves "between reality and dreamlike versions of familiar places to uncover the truth behind a memory he can’t escape." What starts out as daily routine soon gives way to something something more as "ordinary places shift into symbolic dream spaces shaped by memory, regret, and imagination." Slowly but surely, as "fragmented memories resurface," you'll begin piecing together the mystery behind a fateful day in Dylan's past and "why it still lingers."

The Last Exam is a beautiful hand-painted adventure created using "traditional watercolor techniques, preserving the texture, warmth, and imperfections of physical materials." That includes transitional cutscenes that slickly start out black-and-white before being filled in with colour before our eyes, bringing each new scene to life. You'll guide Dylan in traditional third-person, point-and-click fashion through a variety of environments in town and beyond – whether real, imagined, or both. Along the way you will collect inventory items, solve "gentle puzzles" and engage in various minigames, from timing clicks with a moving slider in order to brush your teeth, to strumming away in a bit of Guitar Hero-styled entertainment, ticking items off your to-do list as you go. You'll encounter people who "feel familiar... but not entirely real" as you weave between "grounded spaces and surreal interpretations shaped by memory," gradually unraveling a story that explores "themes of regret, self-forgiveness, and the difficulty of moving forward."

There is no date scheduled for The Last Exam, but you can start cramming for the big test through the playable demo available now on Steam for Windows and Mac.