The Indie Informer

Only four months into development, LUAL Games, the team behind [I] Doesn’t Exist, was showing its next game on GDC’s expo floor. Eldritch Empathy (a working title) is a mix of several inspirations including Papers, Please and Potion Craft, but the game immediately reminds me of Chants of Sennaar — if a horrifying otherworldly being of death and madness had suddenly descended on that title’s gorgeous setting.

The resemblance is, however, a complete accident. The LUAL duo came up with the idea of their translation sim for unfathomable beings some time before Sennaar hit the scene. Far from being a hindrance, the award-winning title which dropped last year proved players were receptive to the idea of a language-centric experience.

In fact, as I played the game, developer Anna-Lena Pontet explained the team had spent much of its time at GDC in talks with publishers. It’s no secret that this year and last have been increasingly difficult for indie creators when it comes to finding funding. So, I couldn’t help wishing the developer good luck and was glad to hear she seemed optimistic.

Cut to the game where my city has been invaded by a Lovecraftian behemoth. Everyone around me is going insane and the world is getting noticeably unhinged. But I’m strangely unaffected, which prompts the leviathan to press me into its service as an intercessor. As a translator and representative of the human world, it’s my job to uncover what all manor of sickening beasts want to keep from destroying Earth.

Luckily, most of them just need someone to talk to. Learning their patterns of speech, I can gently push them toward emotional fulfillment. And if I mess up my translation, I can also just start blasting with a gun I keep hidden, sacrificing some of my fraying sanity. No pressure.

Eldritch Empathy is undeniably in early development and gameplay is still a bit, understandably, rough. Even with placeholder art and rough-cut systems, Eldritch Empathy‘s ideas are riveting. Keep an eye out for it.