Last year, myself, Brendy and Graham got fearfully excited about Straftat, a bountiful free 1v1 FPS with map designs calibrated to nostalgiafuck anybody who ever played Quake over an LAN or hoarded shareware CDs. Our fever burned all the hotter for knowing that Straftat is the work of them wot did Babbdi, the amazing Brutalist exploration game from 2022.
Brendy and Graham have now left the Treehouse, alas, so there is nobody here to get excited with me about VHOLUME, a first-person parkour game from one of the Straftat developers. I am sitting alone in my room, sorrowfully punching the air, tears pooling around my ankles and threatening to short-circuit the PC. Just as well it’s a single player experience, I guess.
Image credit: IronEqual
VHOLUME is the work of Léonard Lemaitre, the aforesaid Straftat dev, plus Nathan Grange and Niels Tiercelin, who I’m not familiar with. It’s being published by IronEqual. The game casts you as Robert, a man galloping through “the derelict capital of Afro-Eurasia”, ruled by a tyrannical Ministry. He’s on a mission to restore his family’s revoked ration tickets. Quite what this has to do with parkour remains to be seen. It doesn’t look like there are any other humans in the setting.
It’s another dystopian Brutalist world of canted slabs, yawning concrete turbines, and slit windows stacked in such a way as to inspire massive trypophobia. In some of the screens, it looks like there’s some liveable urban architecture. In others, it looks like a continuation of Straftat’s abstract level mash-up ethos, with blocks jutting from mist.
The tech is less 90s than that of Straftat or Babbdi, with softer, diffuse lighting and shadows. I’m not sure which aesthetic I prefer. VHOLUME is a handsome beast, but it’s sort of like they rubbed Straftat down with scented oils.
Expect “movement-centric gameplay where the player can jump, run, climb and slide with great freedom”. True princes of parkour “can exploit momentum, discover shortcuts, and break the labyrinthine design, making each run a test of skill and efficiency as they chase target times.”
There’s no release date yet, and no trailer, but you can find some gifs on the Steam page. I imagine Mirror’s Edge fans who can live without the radiance of that game’s City of Glass might enjoy this. As will people who relished last year’s Lorn’s Lure.
