Climbing puzzler Jusant will grip and release this October
Without belay
Jusant had one of the best demos I've played this year. It's a climbing game where you reach and grab with each arm independently and need to carefully manage your stamina while scaling a huge, vertical fantasy world.
It's now has a new trailer and a release date, October 31st.
In the Jusant demo, you were exploring a series of dusty, abandoned structures carved into the cliff face, and slowly reading notes and solving puzzles to piece together the story of its long-gone residents. The trailer above shows more of that world, including higher parts of the climb that look almost like entirely different biomes, with cliff faces covered in green fauna and the player beset by gale-force winds.
That quiet exploration of an abandoned world feels reminiscent of Shadow Of The Colossus, among others, but it's really the climbing that interests me. You can't grip any surface like in Breath Of The Wild, but must choose particular hand-holds as you plot an upward path. There's also a real physicality to it: you need to rest tired arms mid-climb, connect and reel-in your safety cord, and your fingers get a work-out via the analogue sticks and triggers used to independently control and grip each arm.
All of which is the work of Don't Nod, the studio best known for Life Is Strange, but also responsible for Vampyr and the also-upcoming Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden. I hope Jusant can live up to its demo when it launches in just a couple of months.