Baroque

Purged by flames, the world’s remaining population is mutated by distorted fantasies, created to help stomach the inhospitable remains. Heartless meshes of flab, cogs and metalwork - enough to give even Silent Hill’s freaks the willies - these ‘meta-beings’ crawl the world, devouring humanity’s leftovers. Distorted fantasy being the very definition of ‘baroque’ itself. Animal Crossing it ain’t. It is, in fact, a remake of a 1998 Sega Saturn game, spawning a shooting and touch-typing game down the line.

Your role? Awaking as an amnesiac, you’re informed by an angel (natch) to descend the Neuro Tower, allegedly holding the key to survival in its cellar. A full-on dungeon-crawling RPG, progression is made harder by ever-morphing labyrinth designs and hordes of meta-beings trying to eat your face. You can play in both third-person angle and from first-person view. Also, expect to die a lot, but happily each death is said to reveal more of the terrible history. Yay!

We have a real soft-spot for Atlus’s similar Etrian Odyssey and, while tonally much darker - one mechanic has parasites feeding on your body as a means of stat boosting - Baroque is an intriguingly adult prospect.