Chasing the End doesn’t disguise its inspirations for even a second. In the opening scene, Rion, a younger lady in Seoul, South Korea, rises from the mattress in her residence constructing, the TV in the nook exhibiting nothing however static, and a not-so-subtle pixel-art poster of Playdead’s 2016 masterpiece Inside hanging on the wall behind her.
In reality, Inside is the solely pristine factor you may presumably be reminded of as you discover Rion’s world. The whole lot has gone to hell: trash coats the flooring of her constructing, rooms are boarded up, the partitions are cracked and crumbling, and as an aged neighbor stops Rion for a fast chat to plead for assist cleansing her place up, it rapidly turns into clear that this isn’t a affluent world.
In reality, Rion tells her nosy neighbor that she’s given up and that she’s heading to the Han River, the place we quickly information her and be taught that she intends to leap off the bridge, as so many others have earlier than her – all signified by the sneakers left on the aspect of the railing. She has second ideas although, luckily, and is then startled by the sound of gunfire and a crash. She meets a wounded soldier whose fast set off ensured that he was the solely survivor of the scuffle.
As he bleeds out, he entrusts her with a knowledge key; it’s one thing that, if the soldier is to be believed, is so priceless that it may purchase Rion a ticket to a life that may last more than the week or so the Earth has left earlier than it’s destroyed by guaranteeing her passage on an escape rocket for the wealthy and elite.
And thus Rion has a purpose to hope, and Chasing the End has its gameplay catalyst. The demo I performed solely contained the Prelude and a part of Chapter 1, however after organising its raison d’etre, it reveals off the begin of what to anticipate: loads of physics-based puzzles. Like the Playdead video games that impressed it, Chasing the End could have you manipulating objects in the setting in order to clear obstacles and open paths to the subsequent space. The controls are easy – there’s only one work together button and a leap button – and to date it’s nothing sophisticated (at the very least, in this tremendous early slice of the marketing campaign), nevertheless it’s sufficient to get you pondering as you’re drawn in direction of the subsequent a part of Rion’s story.
I fairly like Chasing the End’s easy however very bleak pixel-art visible type, and there’s already extra dialogue right here than in all Playdead video games ever made mixed, which doesn’t assure high quality, nevertheless it does at the very least promise that developer Jino isn’t making an attempt to make a shameless Inside clone. There’s an authentic concept right here – and a somewhat fascinating one at that due to the asteroid-induced apocalypse that serves as the backdrop for the motion – so let’s see if the workforce is ready to fulfill its potential.