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What kind of person would you be in the face of a disaster thats beyond explanation? Would you help distressed neighbors and open your home even to sketchy-looking strangers in the hope that theres strength in numbers, or go it alone regardless of how heavily the odds are stacked against you? Would you still brush your teeth every day? The horror in Francis Coulombes RPG Look Outside is all encompassing. There is the cosmic element: something incomprehensible is happening beyond the walls of your apartment building and its in your best interest to not even look outside, let alone go there. And as you quickly learn, anyone who has looked or been outside is transformed in unimaginable ways, making for some extreme (and extraordinarily creative) body horror. But in much of the game leading up to its multiple climactic endings, the unease also stems from how it makes you look inside at the choices youve made and the person youve become in order to survive. Despite trying to take an empathetic approach, I still found myself in situations that left my character (and me) wracked with guilt. There is a gnawing sense of doubt that grows over the course of the game, repeatedly making me question whether Id, say, made a bad call and been too quick to kill that neighbor whose entire head is teeth, or if my hand was really forced into making a very upsetting sacrifice. After a while, the most unnerving thing is looking in the mirror. And you have to do that a lot in this game, because hygiene affects your stats. Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital It all begins with your character, Sam (you can change the name, if you want), waking up after a strange dream with a strong urge to look outside. You are immediately given the choice between satisfying your curiosity and listening to your gut, and youll find yourself grappling with that dilemma time and time again. At this point, you also meet Sybil, the mysterious next-door neighbor who only speaks to you through the wall, with one glaring eyeball peering out of a large crack. Sybil, whom its unclear if you should trust, tells you that everything will blow over in 15 days if you just wait it out. You need to scavenge for resources if youre going to make it that long, though, and once you leave your apartment and get a chance to talk to some other neighbors, you may decide you want to take a more active role in getting to the bottom of the catastrophe. Some neighbors, particularly a few robed amateur astronomers who appear to be in a cult, seem to know quite a bit about whats going on, and its insinuated that doing tasks for them will help you figure out the how and why of the phenomena around you. Others are more focused on addressing their immediate needs and will try to rope you into their causes: locating missing people, picking up laundry, cleaning the messes left behind by eldritch horrors, etc. Theres a full on war happening somewhere in the building, which you can choose to play a part in if youre so inclined. Your landlord will unsurprisingly still demand you pay him rent despite the circumstances. If you choose to play in Normal mode, like I did, Sybil is your only save point, so youll have to return home regularly. Easy mode autosaves. All interactions are turn-based, and as you explore the apartment building, youll run into tons of enemies and potential allies but the line between the two isnt always easy to distinguish. Sometimes you can only attack or try to escape, which answers the question for you, but other times, you have the opportunity to talk and ask questions. The turn-based nature allows you to take a moment and evaluate each new encounter, but theres always an air of ambiguity about everyones trustworthiness. Even when youre back at your apartment, where you can shower, rest, do some cooking and crafting, and play video games, people will come along and knock on your door, and youll have to make up your mind about whether you should let them in. The thing is, surviving can be pretty difficult once you really get going if youre on your own. Enemies will outnumber and overpower you. Thats where it becomes helpful to have a few allies. With as many as three other people in your party, the scale tips heavily in your favor. I took the trusting approach, for better or worse. This resulted in me having a pretty solid group of fighters on my side, but a pair of those same allies kicked me out of my own bedroom and complained about my cooking. The creature designs come disgustingly, beautifully alive in the pixel art style. Body horror can be really hard to stomach, and something is often lost for me in the process of consuming it when its intended to seem realistic either because Im hiding behind my hands and only taking tiny peeks through my fingers, or because it ends up achieving the opposite effect and just looks ridiculous without meaning to. But Coulombes art equally embraces the horrifying and the absurd, and the effect of that balance is powerful. Nothing was ever so disturbing that I couldnt look straight at it, but there were certainly moments that gave me a genuine scare or made my skin crawl. Even the characters that arent being transformed, like the protagonist, look a little grotesque, which adds to how unsettling everything feels. But just when the dread would reach a fever pitch, something overtly silly would be thrown in almost as if to splash some cold water on the whole thing and say, yes this is the apocalypse but were still human, we still have a sense of humor. Francis Coulombe/Devolver Digital So much of the joy of playing this game is discovering all the tricks it has up its sleeve, so I wont get into any descriptions of bosses, puzzles or the building itself, other than to say that the latter has a whole House of Leaves thing going on that is unbelievably frustrating at times, but in a way that only adds to the brilliance of it all. There is no map to guide you, either. The soundtrack, composed by Eric Shumaker, keeps in perfect step with every emotion the environment evokes, and I could probably write an entire separate review about how good it is. All of this builds up to an absolute cosmic gut-punch of an ending (or endings, there are several) that completely changed the way I felt about the game up until that point. In the end, it becomes something much, much bigger than it once seemed, and the feelings were almost overwhelming. I cant stop thinking abut it. By now Ive played Look Outside many hours beyond what a typical run would be, just picking apart every detail and turning over every stone to try and figure out all the secrets, reach all the conclusions. I have died in all sorts of strange ways, and lived to see wildly different fates pan out. I went into this only with the expectation of cool art and a relatively unique approach to survival horror, and came away shook from what turned out to be one of the best cosmic horror games Ive played in a while, maybe ever. Look Outside, published by Devolver Digital, is only available on Steam for now, but I sure hope it makes its way to other platforms soon so more people can experience it. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/look-outside-is-an-unexpected-cosmic-horror-masterpiece-that-shook-me-to-the-core-171542211.html?src=rss
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Anthropic is joining the ranks of OpenAI in offering a more expensive tier of its flagship chatbot. On Wednesday, the company announced Claude Max. Starting today, you can either pay $100 or $200 per month to use Claude up to 5x or 20x more than you can with Anthropic's existing Pro plan. The company told Engadget it's introducing the Max tier in response to the popularity of Claude 3.7 Sonnet. The new hybrid reasoning model, which excels at coding tasks, has been so popular with users, many are asking to use it as much as they want. With tokens for Claude 3.7 Sonnet costing significantly more than what Google and others charge for access to their lightweight models, Anthropic isn't quite ready to offer unlimited usage of the new model. However, you'll find even OpenAI's $200 per month Pro plan has its own set of restrictions, with monthly limits imposed on "very compute intensive" features like Deep Research. Part of the reason Anthropic is offering two different price points at the Max tier is so that it can give flexibility to customers as their needs change. Additionally, those same users will gain priority access to new models and capabilities as Anthropic releases them.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/anthropics-max-plan-offers-nearly-unlimited-claude-usage-for-200-per-month-170032710.html?src=rss
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Heart Machine knows how to make a stylish game, so its no surprise that the studios latest project, Possessor(s), is sexy as hell. I mean, just look at Rhem, the cosmic demon with a chiseled jawline, aquamarine horns and a fine-cut suit unbuttoned down to his navel, who alternately encourages and negs you throughout the game. Stupid sexy Rhem. It's just fun to have hot characters at the end of the day, Heart Machine founder Alx Preston said at GDC 2025. Preston and three other Heart Machine developers producer Myriame Lachapelle, narrative director Tyler Hutchison and writer Laura Michet played through Possessor(s) while we chatted about the game and the studio. Hutchison continued the hot-characters conversation by praising Heart Machine concept artist Sophie Medvedeva and adding, Since we were kind of building out this visual novel, I was trying to leverage the expertise I brought from Dream Daddy to be like, well, let's make sure these characters are very hot. Sometimes, its as simple as that. Possessor(s) is a sidescrolling sci-fi action game set in the ruins of Sanzu, a corporate megalopolis that's been ripped apart by interdimensional horrors. Sanzu was once a company town controlled by the tech firm Agradyne, but three years ago, a flood of demons escaped the citys underground laboratories, possessing its citizens and transforming most of them into vicious, mutated creatures. The game spans desolate skyscrapers and abandoned aquariums, and it looks like a daydream of a 1990s anime, splattered in neon and shimmering with a sickly green VHS aura. It stars Luca, a possessed-but-lucid 16-year-old whos searching the urban wasteland for any signs of her mother and best friend. The hot descriptor in this game is reserved for the demons, but Luca is stylish, with an iridescent coat, slender metal legs and two horns of her own. Luca is bursting with teenage angst and she has an uneasy relationship with Rhem, the demon whos invaded her consciousness. Hes the only thing keeping her alive, and he needs her in order to finally return home. Luca is missing her mom and her best friend, who both got lost when the demons escaped to destroy the city, Michet said. So she's resentful Rhem won't let her take some time off to find all the people important to her. Heart Machine Together, Luca and Rhem explore Sanzu, investigate the true nature of Agradyne and search for Lucas loved ones. Levels are littered with evil creatures to battle and puzzles to solve, and throughout the game, Luca masters an arsenal of improvised weapons like kitchen knives, a guitar, a hockey stick and a corded computer mouse. Her whip, a power provided by Rhem, allows her to swing across gaps, rapidly reposition and pull in heavy objects and enemies. Combat in the demo seemed to flow smoothly; it was heavy on visual flourishes, leaping airborne attacks and satisfying slashing moves, with Luca bounding seamlessly across floors, walls and platforms. A few frames of line-drawn placeholder art flashed across the screen at one point, but these were the only indication that Possessor(s) isnt actually complete yet. Its due to hit PC and PS5 this year. The original premise was something more like Smash Bros., where you can do directional inputs and kind of build out your loadout to feel more like a different character, Preston said. Where we've ended up is still a bit Smash Bros.-y, in that there's juggling and bouncing enemies on surfaces and things like that. But we've found the spirit of Luca and her character, and what she wants to do. Heart Machine Possessor(s) is eye-catching and combat-focused, and it also has a narrative thats supremely relevant for our times. Boiled down, the premise is that capitalistic megacorporations with an iron grip on society are bad, and young people fighting the system are rad. Interdimensional beings with chiseled pecs and a devastating smoking habit are the hot twist that makes the story uniquely Heart Machines. I mean, it sucks to live in a hierarchical corporate society where your value is determined by your value to the business, Michet said. And Luca will discover this from her teenager perspective. The story in Possessor(s) is branching, with multiple paths to follow and a quarantined city of characters to meet. This is a new mechanic for Heart Machine in fact, the entire game is composed of firsts for the studio, and Possessor(s) is purposefully different from its previous games, Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Hyper Light Breaker. Hyper Light Drifter's moody, 16-bit-inspired isometric action put Heart Machine on the map even before its release in 2016. Solar Ash followed in 2022 and it was a third-person, 3D platformer. Hyper Light Breaker hit the market this January as a third-person, online roguelite with stylized 3D graphics. Meanwhile, Possessor(s) is a hand-drawn, 2.D side-scroller with touches of horror and visual-novel mechanics. Heart Machine This progression aligns with a mentality of curiosity that Preston outlined to Engadget in 2021. At the time, Heart Machine had fewer than 30 developers and they were still building Solar Ash, unsure of how the switch to 3D would be received. Back then, Preston said the following: Hyper Light was a way for me to get started, it was a way for me to be more grounded and put together a crew and understand, can I do this? Can I actually make games? And so having answered that question, then the natural next step for me was something in 3D. Can I put something out there that reall opens up the world and makes you feel like you can truly escape into something, a creation that is otherworldly, that you otherwise wouldn't have the experience of? Since 2021, Heart Machine has endured layoffs and launched a Patreon, and today it has 58 people on staff. Preston remains at the studio's core, still testing new concepts. At GDC 2025, he said, We've done overhead stuff with Drifter back in the day, and then fully 3D was a big jump. I wanted to do something sidescrolling, because there's a lot of different, unique challenges there that are fun to tackle. That perspective for how we do art, and mixing our 3D stuff with a 2D plane, there's a lot of cool opportunities there. Something like Inside was a good point of inspiration, seeing what a smaller team can do with atmospheric chops. And we're pretty good on those fronts. Possessor(s) is due to hit PC and PS5 in 2025, published by Devolver Digital.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/possessors-is-a-game-about-hot-demons-and-other-things-170016014.html?src=rss
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