First details filled in for upcoming Cult Vacui

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Point-and-click horror adventure with survival and time management elements announced for Windows, Mac and Linux

One of the main draws of most adventure games is their relaxed, leisurely pace, but sometimes time really is of the essence and needs to be accounted for. One such game is Cult Vacui, an upcoming point-and-click horror game by solo Italian developer Alessandro of LBRTY Games, a veteran freeware designer working on his first commercial title. 

It's the late nineteenth century when players step into the shoes of a janitor hired to maintain the Gladstone family summer estate on the remote Scottish island of Barra. Just one problem: the night before your arrival, a "creepy cult" initiated a "gruesome blood ritual" that can only be completed if everyone (else) on the island is dead. Your presence has put a serious kink in their plans, and you've become their next and final target – or at least, so you're led to believe. You now have only a few hours to get ready for the "last act of their insane ritual," making the best use of your remaining time to "prepare a defense strategy to displace them and (hopefully) survive."

Inspired by "reverse escape room" games like Scriptwelder's Don't escape series, Cult Vacui is a first-person, slideshow-style pixel art adventure with a "creepy horror atmosphere" and simple point-and-click mechanics. Players can expect "logical but challenging puzzles" to solve, but what makes this game different from most is its inclusion of "survival and time management elements  where your choices could keep you alive... or not." Rather than operate in real time, each action takes a predetermined amount of time that will "subtract from the final act countdown." Your task is to devise "the right strategy to maximize your efforts" in the limited hours you have available, even if it takes "multiple game sessions" (meaning: you're probably gonna die!) to achieve it. There are different possible outcomes based on your choices, and not all (or even most) of them are necessarily good, so expect to replay the game more than once in order to obtain the "perfect ending."

How much time is left before Cult Vacui arrives on Steam and itch.io? That much is still unclear, but the game is expected out sometime later this year for Windows, Mac and Linux. To follow its progress and learn more about the developer's previous freeware releases, be sure to check out the official website.