Amongst the ludicrous variety of games, demos, and bulletins that piled onto my desk final week (notice to self: purchase a desk), there’s an area reserved for Across The Grooves.
This time travelling, introspective visible novel picked a thread of my affection and tugged at it within the midst of the noise of EGX. It’s out now, and it appears to be like as intriguing as I bear in mind.
That’s the brand new trailer, however I’m extra keen on the older one. It captures the atmosphere of the game, or at the very least the elements I performed, which had been stuffed with muted, mellow and inoffensively jazzy music, document scratches, and the gently soporific hubbub of pubs. The pubbub.
You play as Alice, who not like our personal Alices has just one magical energy. After listening to a mysterious vinyl document (an out of date type of a Spotify that doubled as primitive armour for the roaming pirates that killed music), she slips right into a reverie a couple of previous relationship, throughout which her actions can change her previous totally.
There was a spooky bit, probably one in every of a number of, the place I used to be speaking to some pals who immediately had a very totally different reminiscence of Alice’s previous than she did. Naturally, she’s alarmed, but in addition curious, and units about monitoring down the ex that despatched her the document, speaking to numerous folks, notably music lovers, alongside the way in which. The artwork is gorgeous, the wistful undertones wonderful, and the idea is borderline harmful to anybody as liable to fretting about their previous and self-recrimination as I’m. I don’t assume it’s a notably darkish game, however I solely noticed a part of it, and it actually nails all types of obscure existential emotions that would go anyplace. I ought to simply name it French, proper?
According to builders Nova-box, there’ll be a number of paths via the story, a number of totally different endings. Alice herself naturally modifications as your selections and time tampering add up, and even the music “adapts and shifts according to your choices and the mood of each scene”. There’ll be numerous travelling too as you jet about Europe searching for solutions.
Across The Grooves is out now on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux, priced at £11/€13/$13. It’s on Nintendo Switch too.
