Aired last night, Centum is “an unreliable narrative adventure where everything could be a lie”, according to the Steam page. Does the suggestion that everything can be a lie also apply to the suggestion itself? Is this an unreliable Steam page? Maybe the game is secretly a cheerful Playmobile platformer with plentiful ledge assist, rather than a horrible point-and-click that starts you in a dark cell with a bunch of obviously cursed artifacts, and steadily gets worse .
I like the look of Centum. It's exactly my kind of “sense of place”: eerie and messy, with low architecture, stark shadows, and objects you probably shouldn't turn your back on. It seems to be a mixture of genres and styles, like Daniel Mullins' film. Pony Island And Encryption: There's a bit in the trailer that looks like a Mode 7 racing game, and some glimpses of a retro desktop interface. The art is beautiful – look at that cat…that phone…that thing. All of this is admittedly a bit spoiled by marketing language. When one of your points is “Question Reality”, I think you have to get comfortable. Let the images speak for themselves! They are quite enigmatic! You can always fill the Steam page with weird knowledge in the Cthulhu font.
The Steam page has some useful information, mind you. For example, this appears to be a game about tutoring an AI of some sort, which you might not guess from the dark fantasy and gothic appearance of some locations. “There is no single protagonist in Centum,” the Steam page reads. “Instead, players shape the behavior of an artificial intelligence through their choices, guiding it toward different outcomes and experiences.” There are multiple endings in store, “with hidden variables persisting between parts of the game” to encourage replay.
It will be released in summer 2024 on Steam and the Microsoft Store. Previous works of Developer Hack The Publisher include the most joyful Dwarf Sky Dungeon and “Korean style” brawler Mr. Peppermint's Revenge. If you like the Centum trailer, you might also like Submachine: inheritance.