Volatiles was one of the newly announced games on show during The Triple-I Initiative yesterday, but after digging into it today, it might be one of the most interesting games revealed during the entire event.
Developed by Team Instant Defeat and published by 11 bit studios, Volatiles is a tactical roguelite about diving deep inside your own mind in order to fight off an invasive alien substance called the Mold, which has invaded your brain and threatens to take control of you.
Each run has you battle against alien hordes by building an arena in your mind, tile by tile. Therein, as you level up, you must position new parts of the arena. The tiles you place add weapons and upgrades to your run, or might heal you. Either way, the battlefield is constantly reforming, stress-testing your strategy via an ever-growing horde.
Once you fail – and fail you will; this is a roguelite, after all – you awake back in a water-filled sensory tank in a strange lab somewhere. The people around you know something, and you’ve got to work out their motivations before heading back into your own mind.
Inspirations behind Volatiles include the works of David Lynch, the games of Remedy Entertainment, and Valve’s Half-Life series is also name-dropped.
I’d also like to add that the alternate sci-fi Cold War era setting described by the devs sounds utterly fascinating. Of course, fighting an alien horde in your own mind might be terrifying, but being stuck in a lab with a load of shifty scientists doesn’t sound much better.
There’s a new trailer for the announcement, which you can see below and shows the game in action. As confirmed therein, Volatiles is heading to PC via Steam, and you should wishlist the game if you’d like to keep track of Volatiles’ progress in the lab.
