Purple Ray Studio recently unveiled its dark action-adventure Koshmar: The Last Reverie with a trailer. The first footage looks promising and immediately brought American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns to mind.

On April 7, 2023, American McGee officially announced on Patreon that Alice: Asylum was dead. The reason: EA, which owns the rights to the series, turned down both development funding and a license for the sequel to Alice: Madness Returns.

After that, AmericanMcGee—understandably—stepped away from game development altogether, frustrated and fed up. So no, that project isn't coming back. But today, a small glimmer of hope showed up in my press inbox.

That glimmer is called Koshmar: The Last Reverie—a newly announced single-player action-adventure very much in the vein of American McGee's work. Purple Ray Studio also names Control and Hades as inspirations, two games that don't exactly need an introduction.

What matters most, though, is that the Polish developer didn't just talk a big game; it actually showed something.

Koshmar trailer shows snippets of gameplay

Alongside several screenshots, Purple Ray Studio also released an announcement trailer (see below). It runs just under a minute and a half and—thankfully—doesn't rely on cinematics alone. There are also quick-cut gameplay snippets from a third-person perspective.

What we see in the trailer is described by the developer as "sreamy action combat with roguelite, RPG, platformer, and puzzle elements in a surreal, nightmarish world." I'd mostly go along with that, though I couldn't make out any RPG elements myself. According to the game description, though, they are definitely part of the package.

Alice is called Violet here

The main character in Koshmar: The Last Reverie is Violet, the teenage daughter of an undertaker. Fair enough—her gothic outfit had to come from somewhere. 🙂 Violet retreats into lucid dreams, until a mysterious sleeping sickness spreads through her city and nightmares start spilling into the real world.

According to the developers, the game draws on Central Europe, Victorian aesthetics, 1920s influences, and historical themes tied to sleeping sickness. The setting, Radwan, is described as a gothic city made up of several distinct districts.

In gameplay terms, it's all about exploring the city, entering nightmares or Nightmare Rifts, fighting, solving puzzles, unlocking abilities and weapons, and fine-tuning your build through equippable items. On top of that, there's a morality system or character alignment that affects your playstyle, the way the world appears to you, and how NPCs respond.

When will Koshmar: The Last Reverie be released?

Koshmar: The Last Reverie is coming to PC and "consoles"—though Purple Ray Studio still isn't saying which ones. There's no exact release date yet, but there is at least a release window: 2027. And the second there's more news on Koshmar, you'll almost certainly read it on Mainstream Outside.

Until then, I'll probably give American McGee's Alice (2000) another playthrough. And if you'd like to see a DRM-free version of that game get an official release too, go ahead and vote for it on GOG's Dreamlist. Maybe EA can still be talked into that much one day... maybe.