We Love It's Guide to…
A contractor searches a silent deep-sea lab for lost research, navigating by an unreliable text-reading AI visor and sound.
Released 08 Nov 2024
Navigate by Text
Map the Lab Blind
Question the AI Visor
Congratulations, contractor! You've been approved to trial our cutting-edge AI visor. Use it to explore the Neuras lab and recover the staff's research. Your visor is safe, reliable, and up to 99% accurate. Just don't ask why the "ketchup" in the corner makes such a horrible crunching sound.
Developed by Cain Maddox · Published by Cain Maddox
You are a contractor sent to a deep-sea laboratory after Neuras cuts contact with its investors. Your assignment is to recover the company’s research and other valuable files, while the lab’s silence raises questions about what happened there.
Explore the facility in first person with an AI visor that describes nearby objects in text, but offers limited and sometimes uncertain information. Use its prompts, proximity data, audio cues, and your sense of direction to move through rooms and build a mental map.
Recover research and read the staff’s chats and records at the console to piece together the team’s story. Manager calls and discoveries along the way add context to the investigation as you work toward uploading the files.
In this sample, players often praise the unusual visor-based navigation, saying that limited descriptions and sound make the lab unsettling and encourage them to imagine what they cannot see. Many also enjoy the character writing, research logs, and story, while some find navigation frustrating, wish the experience were longer, or feel its horror and gameplay do not fully develop the premise.
the optimist says it’s half human
the pessimist says it’s half monster
and the project manager says, “when can we ship it?”
PROXIMATE is a dread-driven narrative game where you investigate a deep sea laboratory and piece together the events that lead to the research team’s demise.
You'll be required to wear an image recognition visor that only tells you the bare minimum information you need to succeed — and sometimes less. Use text information, proximity data and audio clues to form a mental map of your surroundings and pray that your technology won't fail you when you need it most.
There is no monster.
Assignment timeboxed to 90 minutes. If you’re here longer than that, we might have to dock your pay.
Your visor says that the red stain on the wall is ketchup. It was coded by some very smart people, so you should definitely trust it.
Collect chat logs from the research team, but don't read into them too much. We're not paying you to figure out some kind of sinister mystery here.
I mean, we haven’t seen the monster. So it’s probably not there.
Receive helpful calls from your manager, voiced by Luke Austin, who's here to make your job easier. Probably.
Connect with a cast of queer characters, who we definitely cared about and will miss dearly. Oh hey, have you signed that waiver yet?
If you hear it, turn away.
After labor rights movements sweep large parts of India and Southeast Asia, companies around the world lose their supply of cheap exploitable workers. Melbourne-based tech startup Neuras decides to attempt the impossible: installing AI drives into the freshly dead to create a cheap and endless supply of workers.
After a year of disappointing results, the Neuras lab suddenly cuts all contact with their investors. You, a contractor for the country's largest investment firm, have been tasked with investigating the lab and recovering the firm's rightful IP. But it's the firm's other investment project -- the SONA visor -- that might end up being your bigger problem.
That, and the breathing you keep hearing behind the door.
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
|---|---|
| Age ratings |
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| Controller support | Xbox |
| Controller required | No |
