Crash landing anywhere is never a good time, let alone when it's on a thawing alien ice planet on the edge of the solar system. But that's exactly what happens in my introduction to Aphelion, the upcoming third-person action adventure from Life is Strange developer, Don't Nod. As protagonist Ariane, I'm sliding down my wrecked ship after exiting the cockpit, swerving her this way and that to avoid obstacles; like a fiery blaze and pieces of wrenched metal. Separated from my fellow astronaut crewmate Thomas, I'm now on a mission to find him, but as I'll soon come to learn, we're not the only life residing on this cold world.
I didn't know what to expect going into Aphelion if I'm completely honest. After all, Don't Nod as a studio keeps trying to do new things with its narrative chops. From the climbing adventure Jusant that spins a moving tale without using dialogue, to the highly underrated atmospheric action-RPG Vampyr, or the dark fantasy of Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, the developer continually surprises me, and I mean that in the best sense. Even the latest episodic fare in Lost Records: Bloom and Rage experimented with a past and present timeline that hooked me in.
Now that I've seen a preview – guided by creative director Florent Guillaume and executive producer Dimitri Weideli – and tried out a short demo of the game for myself, Aphelion looks set to continue this trend by exploring a story with a sci-fi edge that has some surprises of its own.
The climb
Set in the year 2062 when Earth is in crisis as a result of global warming, Aphelion follows astronauts Ariane and Thomas who are the two-person team of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Hope-01 scientific mission. Together, they aim to survey the newly discovered ice planet known as Persephone and see if it's a habitable place for humanity. Interestingly, Don't Nod actually collaborated with ESA in reality because, as Guillaume explains during the preview, the team wanted to make a science fiction experience based in a near-future setting that's a "projection of our current world", rather than a "sci-fi fantasy".
Of course, an emergency crash landing wasn't a part of the plan, nor was Thomas and Ariane's separation. While I don't get to play as Thomas during my demo, Guillaume explains that we'll get to play as both astronauts during the story, which is broken up into 11 chapters that are about an hour long each. Ariane is viewed as the main protagonist overall who has more involved sections, while Thomas is injured and can't traverse in the same way as his crewmate.
With the chance to try out short parts of chapters one and four as Ariane, my dicey slide down the ship at the start of my demo ends with me pushing A on my Xbox Series X controller to grab the latch of a panel, and avoid falling to the icy depths below. Given that the space-faring vessel is no longer in an upright position, there's only one way I'm getting off this ship and onto the planet's surface: I'm going to have to climb.
My climb off the ship in chapter one serves as a tutorial to help me get to grips with the inputs and movements, and as Guillaume says, Ariane has to do her fair share of it planet-side to navigate the frozen terrain. Climbing up and jumping across ledges Assassin's Creed-style, you don't immediately latch onto surfaces, and instead have time a press of X to avoid falling, which Guillaume says adds a "little extra risk" to traversal – though you can also press a follow-up button if you miss to catch yourself.
"We're not the same team as Jusant but we share a few people from both teams, and it did, of course, help when developing the game," Guillaume says. "We chose a different way than Jusant because it is much more systemic in the way they climb and in our game, we wanted it to not be as complex in terms of mechanics, in terms of inputs. We wanted the player to have something fluid, accessible, but still requires a timing challenge to overcome."
On the flip side, I get to watch footage of a chapter following Thomas, who can't climb thanks to his injuries. But with tools at his disposal, he uses the grappling hook to instead latch onto an obstacle and tug it down so he can make his way inside a mysterious settlement. With no vertical traversal, Thomas' section seems much more focused on exploration and environmental interactions, and I have hopes this will change up the flow and pacing each chapter.
The Nemesis
In terms of the story, Guillaume and Weideli confirm that Aphelion is a linear experience, meaning that it won't have branching narratives based on your choices, or have multiple endings like in Life is Strange or Lost Records: Bloom and Rage. But I'm already really drawn to the idea of a story that follows two characters separated in the same place.
As Guillaume explains, "there are interactions between chapters, so something that you do with one character in one chapter will affect the character in another scene". It sounds like Ariane and Thomas' experiences will be interwoven as we go from chapter to chapter, not unlike Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden. And while the team are avoiding going much deeper into the lore of Persephone, Guillaume teases that there's a "supernatural way" the pair can communicate with each other even when separated.
Ariane and Thomas keep audio logs of what they're seeing and experiencing on the planet, which Guillaume describes as a kind of like doing a "message in a bottle", since Ariane and Thomas don't know if it's being received. And as we explore, we can find the other character's logs. Since they're alone, it's of course also a handy way to get across what each respective character is feeling during any given scenario, which certainly comes across when an unexpected threat comes into the picture. During my demo in chapter four, the main antagonist of Aphelion pops up and throws some stealth into the mix.
After falling through an ice sheet, Ariane comes into the path of an unknown entity the team refers to as "the Nemesis". Said to be made of ice with a gaseous nature which allows it to snake through the environment and appear unexpectedly, it looks like a black, tendril-y serpent with an ominous glowing red maw – it actually brings to mind the shape of the Thresher Maw in Mass Effect.
"You will learn from your mistakes, you will try a route, fail, come back and try again. That's part of the experience we intend with the Nemesis."
Florent Guillaume, creative director
It's at once clear this life-form doesn't take kindly to your presence on this planet; darting and diving at Ariane in sharp movements as though it intends to pierce her on its beak like a kebab. With no means to fight back, I have to sneak past it and scarper out of an ice cave below ground. Relying on my navigator – which looks a bit like the viewfinder of BD-1's scope in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – I find the direction of my objective (which in this case is an exit from the cave).
Since the Nemesis can't see, it's reliant on sound, so the minute I climb or stop crouching and run, it'll be on me like a shot. Studying its path, I tensely move through the cave network as the Nemesis is forever searching for me. I make it to my exit unscathed thanks to my careful movements, but the team promises the encounters with this foe will get more challenging as time goes on. Taking inspiration from the likes of the Alien films, with Guillaume also subtly nodding to Alien: Isolation, the Nemesis will have different attacks that it'll use throughout the game, and we'll also get new abilities to help us out – such as ways to place decoys.
"We intend the Nemesis to be difficult. We intend it to be accurate and to propose a challenge for players," Guillaume says. "Obviously, we try to balance the fact that it is difficult but accessible. It is doable, but we want players to find different ways to beat these situations. We believe that being difficult makes it rewarding. You will learn from your mistakes, you will try a route, fail, come back and try again. That's part of the experience we intend with the Nemesis."
How difficult it'll be remains to be seen since I only got to experience the initial encounter (and the team reassures us that it will come with accessibility options to tailor the experience), but the Nemesis is certainly one of the many surprises of Aphelion so far. I've really come to appreciate that Don't Nod keeps trying out new things in the narrative game scene, and I'm definitely curious to see how the complete picture of Ariane and Thomas' story on Persephone comes together when it releases in Spring 2026.
Look ahead to more exciting releases with our roundup of new games for 2026 (and beyond).
