In GDC 2025, I saw a tutorial of one of the first levels of holders, the next Heart Machine game. The study generally applies to action games, but mixed in a little otherwise: the 2016 Hyper Light vagabond had RPG elements, the 2021 solar ash was an adventure platform and Hyper Light Breaker of 2025 is a Roguelike cooperative. Poser (s) is a metroidvania or, as the heart machine prefers to call it, a search action game (which, sincerely, is such a better term for gender).
A displacement, possessor (s) sees you interpret as two characters: Luca, a teenager, and Rehm, the demon who possesses it. I could not see the events that led to their association, but the Heart Machine team explained that the beginning of the owners (s) sees Luca trapped in an interdimensional catastrophe that starts a hole in the sky and kills all those who love, it is only for the intervention of the strange man with horns that now survives.
Rehm also gives luca artificial legs (I don’t know what happened to his original legs, but I suppose the full game will give us the track), so that he can jump higher and survive falls from any height, and Luca uses these new prostheses to navigate the city now quantinated in the hope of displaying it and learning more about how the catastrophe happened. The duo regularly talks about its substantially different points of view of demons and the corporation responsible for most of all in the city, relieving much of the sensation of loneliness that I have expected in other search action games.
Thanks to Rehm, Luca can defend himself in a world that wants to kill her. The fight is against the possessed objects and the people of the city: much more wild demons that Rehm has corrupted all kinds of things in the metropolis. I was surprised when a pot in pot that had been pretending to be totally inanimate and harmless came to life when Luca passed by her, and the developers said that many demons will adopt that strategy of hiding in sight when pretending to be apparently normal parts of the world. When a fight explodes, mechanically, it looks a lot to play Super Smash Bros., with emphasis on combos and juggling. It looks more attractive than Hyper Light Breaker, but I don’t get practical time with Possor (s), so I can’t say one way or another safely.
Like his gender contemporaries, Luca unlocks additional skills over time, which open new options in combat and open new map areas. I did not have the opportunity to see this in action, but it seems that it works as how the updates in Hollow Knight, nine soles, Super Metroid and other similar games, with an open and interconnected world are handled that allows players to explore in which they have access.
Stylistically, Possor (s) is the greatest deviation from Hyper Light Drifter images, not bad in any way, but surprising anyway, since each subsequent game of the study has followed that art direction quite closely. The colors are certainly similar, but the characters of the owners (s) seem hand drawn, and the boldest lines and the most striking colors for animations make attacks and movements appear as something of a comic or manga. It’s great, and at least in terms of art direction, possessors (s) is my favorite of Heart Machine games. It was not at all what I expected, but the game intrigues me anyway, and I can’t wait to skip himself later this year.
Poser (s) will be launched for PS5 and PC at some point in 2025.
