This year’s Summer Game Fest Play Days featured a ton of upcoming indie titles, but none stood out to us more thanPossessor(s), the upcoming post-apocalyptic metroidvania from indie developers Heart Machine that follows a young girl possessed by a demon as they try to escape her destroyed city. With a stunning and beautiful 2.5D art style, brutal and satisfying combat, and a cast of hilarious and memorable characters, this is sure to be another classic from Devolver Digital’s ever-expanding roster.
Fight Back and Find Your Way Out
After an industrial disaster leaves her home city in ruins (and her legs permanently removed from her body), Luca accepts help from a supernatural entity, who brings her back to health and embues her with great power. The catch? The process of saving Luca took years, and she has finally woken up to discover that her body is now the host to Rehm, a moody and well-dressed demon who escaped captivity during the disaster. With the city under quarantine, Luca and Rehm must find a way to escape the lockdown and find out what happened to her family (and the strange corporation that caused everything).
With a countless number of demons unleashed upon the city, they have had no choice but to find hosts wherever they can, which is where enemies and combat come in. Several demons have become enraged beyond repair after being trapped in random, unpowerful subjects, such as houseplants and corporate executives. Luca must defend herself (and, by extension, Rehm) using whatever weapons she can find lying around. These weapons are largely repurposed household objects, such as a computer mouse that allows her to grapple and pull enemies from a distance.
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Metroidvania exploration mechanics are combined with platform fighter-inspired combat, with Luca capable of juggling, parrying and stringing together combos against enemies. Luca’s attacks are satisfyingly responsive and powerful, but so are the attacks of her enemies, who come at you with everything they’ve got. We enjoyed the creative approaches to combat that the game let us make, with different weapons and objects reinforcing different fighting styles adding to the many choices of attacks and combos able to be utilized.
An especially memorable boss fight at the end of the demo saw Luca facing off against a demon-hosting office worker, who flew around the screen firing projectiles while their possessed suitcase chomped at Luca with melee attacks. One attack of theirs allowed us to retaliate with high damage by parrying ranged attacks back at the boss, while also giving the option to completely move away from the projectiles to wait for the foe to arrive at the end of the screen, where they’d become vulnerable to an airborne attack. These kinds of choices are found everywhere in the many combat encounters, especially when multiple enemies are on screen.
Escape the Quarantine in Devilishly Good Style
Equally enjoyable to the tight and brutal combat was the progressing story and dialogue between our two main characters, who are unwillingly forced to work together despite their differences and multiple sarcastic comments. Stopping at rest points to regain health or drop off currency was a more enjoyable experience thanks to the antics and conversations of Rehm and Luca, with their discussions revealing more about the characters as well as the strange demon-infused sci-fi world that they exist within. While we only got to see the start of the story, it’s clear that their relationship will grow and we’ve begun to see that there’s a deeper side to the often-standoffish Rehm.
We heavily enjoyed the creative approaches to combat that the game let us make, with different weapons and objects reinforcing different fighting styles adding to the many choices of attacks and combos able to be utilized.
It also can’t go without saying that the art style is incredibly stunning and unique, with side-scrolling gameplay exploring three-dimensional environments full of minimalist design made more complex by incredible lighting mechanics. Dialogue takes a similar approach to Supergiant’s hit roguelikeHades, with gorgeous hand-drawn characters popping up on screen next to their text panels as they speak. The tinge of bright mint green that differentiates both the characters and the UI from the rest of the game gives it a subtly-memorable bit of extra flair, shifting away from the dark red color palettes usually associated with demonic entities in media.
We grew addicted to the brutal-yet-fair combat and charming writing ofPossessor(s)during our short time with the demo at Summer Game Fest, and can’t wait to get our hands on more of Luca and Rehm’s adventure. While the game is slated for release on PC and consoles later this year, anybody interested in checking out what the game has to offer can thankfully download and play the demo for free onthe game’s Steam pageright now.
Possessor(s)
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