Paper Salamander Games Releases Demo for Musical Action Platformer

In Retrospect will launch on PC through Steam and Itch.io later this year.

“As I get older I have been thinking about how quickly life flies by and how a lot of the major decisions we make related to education, work, love and more, no matter how much time we take to make them, feel like they happened in a flash when looking back on them in retrospect,” said lead designer Andrew Nee. “I wanted to tell a story that pared down this concept into a smaller, more twitch package, where split second decisions can change everything. And I have always felt that the different phases of our life can be expressed through sound, so I knew that syncing the story, gameplay and music into a coherent whole had to be involved as well.”

In Retrospect is made up of two core modes, both of them focusing on musical action platforming gameplay. Between both modes there are over 100 different platforms, enemies and hazard types, so there is always something new to see!

Story Mode takes you through your past over the course of many phases, where the collectibles you gather and your answers to certain key questions help determine how you remember your life, changing both the story and the gameplay as you progress throughout the mode. Will you focus on health, wealth, love, education, creativity or spirituality? How will you remember your life? Every stage in Story Mode also has its own unique song that syncs with the gameplay.

Challenge mode includes 30+ individual stages built to be played for high scores, with full leaderboards attached to each of them. Every one of these challenge stages syncs the music and gameplay as well.

So, that's a thing. There's no solid release date yet, but the developer has now released a demo which interested parties can either download via Steam or itch.io.

Staff article by Gary Hartley (April 22, 2021) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.