3DAW has announced its supernatural action-adventure Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli with a gameplay trailer. And yes, I do mean actual gameplay—the video skips the usual pre-rendered nonsense entirely. But the real hook here is the game’s pulpy sci-fi Aztec setting, complete with an environment that keeps changing around you.

It may sound a bit absurd coming from a games journalist, but I hate game trailers. And you can probably guess why: most of them are stuffed with cinematic fluff and tell you next to nothing about the actual game. Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli takes a far more welcome approach. It gets to the point and shows what you’ll really be doing in this strange Aztec adventure.

From the look of it, the thing feels like a mix of Uncharted, Alan Wake and a little Crysis for seasoning. Not a bad combo at all. You play a bounty hunter exploring a “living mountain shaped by Aztec mythology” from a third-person perspective.

His mission is to stop an ancient being that’s close to breaking free from its prison deep inside the mountain. Personally, I would’ve expected some treasure hunter trying to nick a few of Montezuma’s valuables—but Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli seems to have slightly weirder ideas.

Loop zones and reality shifts

The second twist is that, according to the press material, the Black Mountain “watches, remembers, and punishes.” So maybe don’t start booting loose stones around or making terrible mountain jokes just yet (“What’s white and rolls uphill? An avalanche on its way home.” 😎).

The third surprise: buried inside the mountain is a surprisingly modern research facility where experiments have literally ripped reality apart. Even so, Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli isn’t all concrete corridors and sci-fi tech. Beneath the complex lie ancient Aztec chambers, including the place where the creature you’re hunting was originally sealed away.

That already sounds like exactly the right kind of nonsense, but it gets better. One result of the experiments is the existence of so-called “Loop Zones”—areas that reset themselves, shift their layout, and sometimes even overlap. Just as important is the game’s switching between two realities: rooms, routes and combat conditions change depending on where you are. A bunker corridor might suddenly become an ancient temple hall, while cover or obstacles can disappear altogether.

That should make combat a fair bit more dynamic too. A short firefight later in the trailer hints at exactly that. In the gameplay trailer, no less! The enemy in that scene, by the way, appears to be a teleporting cyber-Aztec in a combat suit with a feathered headdress. Sounds completely reasonable.

Wallrunning in an Aztec temple

For all its stranger ideas, Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli also has a more conventional side. In the combat shown, the action-adventure occasionally slips into third-person cover-shooter territory. To stop things from getting stale too quickly, the mountain hands you experimental weapons and bits of technology across both realities.

That said, the trailer doesn’t reveal all that much of those—or of the stealth sections mentioned in the game description. Most of the footage focuses on vertical climbing sequences and a little platforming, including a fairly slick wallrun. Personally, I still think wallrunning belongs more in Call of Duty and its extended family, but fine—I’ll allow it.

Strong alpha-build energy

It would’ve been nice if developer 3DAW had thrown in a release date straight away, but clearly we’re not there yet. The trailer makes that fairly obvious too: visually, what’s shown already looks solid, but the performance and some of the slightly stiff-looking movement still have very strong alpha-build energy.

At the moment, Black Mountain of Tlaltecuhtli has only been announced for PC. There’s also still no word on pricing, and it remains unclear whether the currently very limited language support—English only, for now—will stay that way.