At about this time last year, developer Rusty Lake had just released a new game called The White Door, which also marked some new territory for them. It was stylistically a bit different from their previous Cube Escape and Rusty Lake series, though it was still tangentially related story-wise, and it also featured a really interesting side-by-side double view that constantly gave you two different perspectives on what was unfolding in the game. We thought it was really cool. Then in April they surprise-released (for free!) Samsara Room, a remake of their first title that acted as a precursor to the Cube Escape series and the Rusty Lake trilogy. Then in October they released Cube Escape Collection on Steam, a collection of all 9 Cube Escape games in one package that was also a way to preserve the games on PC prior to the demise of Flash at the start of this year.

Now Rusty Lake has shed light on their next project called The Past Within with this incredibly cool live action teaser trailer.

Ok so there is a lot to unpack here. As the one-eyed voodoo doll alludes to, this is a game centering around Albert Vanderboom from Rusty Lake: Roots, one of the most twisted characters in any of Rusty Lake’s games. He’s also… dead, but as Rusty Lake teased on their blog back in November, “The past is never dead." The main hook behind The Past Within is that it’s designed as a cooperative multiplayer game for two, where one player experiences events of the past and one player experiences events of the future and by communicating with one another you can solve the various puzzles in the game and discover the truth behind Albert Vanderboom’s strange existence. One other thing worth noting is that in addition to Rusty Lake’s trademark 2D visuals, The Past Within will feature some 3D environments for the first time ever. I’m not gonna lie, seeing Rusty Lake-ish stuff in 3D is weird but also very cool.

Rusty Lake isn’t prepared to give any sort of release window for The Past Within, but it should release at some point in 2021. They’re also shooting for full cross-platform support between PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and possibly even console.