Proximate

About

is Proximate is an indie adventure game where you explore a sunken research facility to uncover why its staff vanished. You rely on a glitch-prone visor that scans your surroundings but withholds key details. The interface shows minimal visuals and text prompts, forcing you to cross-reference audio echoes, environmental notes, and spatial memory to navigate. Every step forward requires piecing together fragmented clues while wondering if your tools will hold up or mislead you. The game builds claustrophobic tension through its unreliable tech and murky storytelling. Set in a near-future where corporate ethics are dubious at best, the lab’s secrets tie into real-world anxieties about AI and labor exploitation. Developed by Cain Maddox, it runs on PC, Mac, and Linux. With a November 2024 release, early access builds hint at a slow-burn mystery where every creak and whisper feels like a threat.

Storyline

After labor rights movements sweep large parts of India and Southeast Asia, companies around the world lose their supply of cheap exploitable workers. Melbourne-based tech company Neuras decides to attempt the impossible: installing AI drives into the freshly dead to create a cheap and endless supply of workers. After a year of disappointing results, the Neuras lab suddenly cuts all contact with their investors. You, a contractor for the country's largest investment firm, have been tasked with investigating the lab and recovering the firm's rightful IP. But it's the firm's other investment project -- a sonar-based image recognition visor -- that might end up being your bigger problem. That, and the footsteps you keep hearing behind the door.