Sci-Fi Game Wants You To Romance Holograms

Alone With You is a spooky sci-fi adventure with a heaping helping of romance. Wanna feel Feelings for AI holograms of your dead colleagues? Wanna feel exceedingly weird about that? Here you go.

The game is coming to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita sometime next year. Here’s what it’s about:

“You play the sole remaining member of a doomed terraforming colony. Your planet will crumble and implode in less than a month, and you must use your remaining time to try to escape. The catch? There is only one escape pod left, and it isn’t functioning. Even worse, the only people who specialized in its systems are all dead from the colony’s mysterious failure. But the colony’s AI is still with you, and together you plan to get yourselves off the planet—by recreating those key colony members and learning how to fix the ship, so you can both flee to safety.”

As you explore, you develop relationships with the AI and your robotically reincarnated pals. According to creator Benjamin Rivers, romance plays a key role in the story, so yeah. Get ready to feel weird.

During PSX, I asked Rivers why he decided to mash-up sci-fi exploration and romance in such a particular way—instead of, say, making a pure space horror game or a dating sim—and he brought up the example of BioWare. He pointed out that when people discuss Mass Effect or Dragon Age, the first question they ask isn’t, “What class did you play?” or “What was your character build?” It’s usually “Who did you romance?” People who don’t necessarily play dating sims still like romance in their games. You’ve just gotta give them other interesting stuff to do, too.

Here’s Rivers walking me through a demo of Alone With You and telling me more about the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrH1ULob2UY

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