RiftMode
You step across the threshold into a long-abandoned Spanish village. Decaying plaster falls from stone walls as if a northern mist has fallen silently upon the place. It’s been twenty-one years since you last set foot in this isolated place, and that was as a child following your parents on holiday. But an unexpected letter has brought you back in 2004 to find that your father has died and you must return to your childhood home – now a near-abandoned place of sorrow and remembrance. The floorboards creak beneath your footsteps as you journey through dark, cold, and narrow corridors. There is little sign of recent life, and sunlight struggles to penetrate the cracked glass of outdated windows to cast musty, dancing shadows upon the walls and across tables and surfaces long forgotten. This is a semi-realistic low-poly world with a cold and oppressive atmosphere that exudes the scent of damp earthy smell and yellowed, dusty old paper. Your progress through the long-deserted houses and overgrown courtyards and crumbling stone foundations is punctuated by the dark, ancient, rural legends that have been passed down through the generations and which have begun to invade your memories of this place and time. You are sharply aware of your surroundings and move from room to room and from house to house in search of clues and solutions to the three-dimensional puzzles that you must solve in order to progress through the settlement. To help progress and to record clues, you also carry a journal where you will sketch symbols, keys, and detailed architectural plans of areas you have yet to explore. A foreboding sense of fear pervades your journey as you are aware that you are being watched by some unknown entity from the very shadows themselves. Creaking ceiling beams and mysterious drafts of cold air through doors and windows all serve to heighten your isolation and increase your sense of growing unease and fear as you progress from one musty, dark, and foreboding house to the next through the deserted and overgrown yards and courtyards in search of clues and solutions to the various problems that you must solve in order to unravel the history of the settlement and of your own family’s past. As you progress through the various houses and their many rooms, each solution brings momentary respite from your fears as each newly-opened door reveals only further confusion, mystery, and ancestors’ conflicts and legends – some of which have been hidden for decades. After a time to collect yourself, you sit in silence to review your scattered journal sketches of ancient symbols and numerous keys and house plans in an attempt to organize your thoughts and to garner some renewed sense of purpose as you set off once more into the dark silence of the next house.
Features include:
- EXPLORE THE VILLAGE AND ITS INTERIORS – Explore an abandoned Spanish village, its buildings, and surroundings, presented in a semi-realistic PSX-inspired visual style that defines most of the adventure.
- UNCOVER YOUR TRAUMATIC PAST – Relive fragments of a past you thought you had forgotten, back when the village was still your home and full of life. Experience a shift in both aesthetics and gameplay, from 3D to retro 2D, accompanied by 8-bit music.
- SOLVE PUZZLES – Solve a wide variety of puzzles in both 3D and 2D memory sequences to progress through the story or discover new collectibles.
- DRAW YOUR JOURNEY – As you progress, Ángela will sketch and document your journey in her trusty journal. You can revisit these drawings at any time to recall events or uncover clues.
Why are the ancient legends of northern Spain suddenly coming to life? Can a forgotten journal hold the key to escaping this nightmare? Who is watching her from the deepest shadows of these empty streets?
Enjoy the trailer — until the Rift opens again, know that you’re appreciated.
