Heart Machine knows how to make a stylish game, so it’s no surprise that the studio’s latest project, Possessor(s), is sexy as hell. I mean, just look at Rhem, the cosmic demon with a chiseled jawline, aquamarine horns and a fine-cut suit unbuttoned down to his navel, who alternately encourages and negs you throughout the game. Stupid sexy Rhem.
“It's just fun to have hot characters at the end of the day,” Heart Machine founder Alx Preston said at GDC 2025. Preston and three other Heart Machine developers — producer Myriame Lachapelle, narrative director Tyler Hutchison and writer Laura Michet — played through Possessor(s) while we chatted about the game and the studio.
Hutchison continued the hot-characters conversation by praising Heart Machine concept artist Sophie Medvedeva and adding, “Since we were kind of building out this visual novel, I was trying to leverage the expertise I brought from Dream Daddy to be like, well, let's make sure these characters are very hot.”
Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.
Possessor(s) is a sidescrolling sci-fi action game set in the ruins of Sanzu, a corporate megalopolis that's been ripped apart by interdimensional horrors. Sanzu was once a company town controlled by the tech firm Agradyne, but three years ago, a flood of demons escaped the city’s underground laboratories, possessing its citizens and transforming most of them into vicious, mutated creatures. The game spans desolate skyscrapers and abandoned aquariums, and it looks like a daydream of a 1990s anime, splattered in neon and shimmering with a sickly green VHS aura.
It stars Luca, a possessed-but-lucid 16-year-old who’s searching the urban wasteland for any signs of her mother and best friend. The “hot” descriptor in this game is reserved for the demons, but Luca is stylish, with an iridescent coat, slender metal legs and two horns of her own. Luca is bursting with teenage angst and she has an uneasy relationship with Rhem, the demon who’s invaded her consciousness. He’s the only thing keeping her alive, and he needs her in order to finally return home.
“Luca is missing her mom and her best friend, who both got lost when the demons escaped to destroy the city,” Michet said. “So she's resentful Rhem won't let her take some time off to find all the people important to her.”
Together, Luca and Rhem explore Sanzu, investigate the true nature of Agradyne and search for Luca’s loved ones. Levels are littered with evil creatures to battle and puzzles to solve, and throughout the game, Luca masters an arsenal of improvised weapons like kitchen knives, a guitar, a hockey stick and a corded computer mouse. Her whip, a power provided by Rhem, allows her to swing across gaps, rapidly reposition and pull in heavy objects and enemies.
Combat in the demo seemed to flow smoothly; it was heavy on visual flourishes, leaping airborne attacks and satisfying slashing moves, with Luca bounding seamlessly across floors, walls and platforms. A few frames of line-drawn placeholder art flashed across the screen at one point, but these were the only indication that Possessor(s) isn’t actually complete yet. It’s due and this year.
“The original premise was something more like Smash Bros., where you can do directional inputs and kind of build out your loadout to feel more like a different character,” Preston said. “Where we've ended up is still a bit Smash Bros.-y, in that there's juggling and bouncing enemies on surfaces and things like that. But we've found the spirit of Luca and her character, and what she wants to do.”
Possessor(s) is eye-catching and combat-focused, and it also has a narrative that’s supremely relevant for our times. Boiled down, the premise is that capitalistic megacorporations with an iron grip on society are bad, and young people fighting the system are rad. Interdimensional beings with chiseled pecs and a devastating smoking habit are the hot twist that makes the story uniquely Heart Machine’s.
“I mean, it sucks to live in a hierarchical corporate society where your value is determined by your value to the business,” Michet said. “And Luca will discover this from her teenager perspective.”
The story in Possessor(s) is branching, with multiple paths to follow and a quarantined city of characters to meet. This is a new mechanic for Heart Machine — in fact, the entire game is composed of firsts for the studio, and Possessor(s) is purposefully different from its previous games, Hyper Light Drifter, Solar Ash and Hyper Light Breaker. Hyper Light Drifter's moody, 16-bit-inspired isometric action put Heart Machine on the map in 2016. Solar Ash followed in 2022 and it was a third-person, 3D platformer. hit the market this January as a third-person, online roguelite with stylized 3D graphics. Meanwhile, Possessor(s) is a hand-drawn, 2.D side-scroller with touches of horror and visual-novel mechanics.
This progression aligns with a mentality of curiosity that Preston . At the time, Heart Machine had fewer than 30 developers and they were still building Solar Ash, unsure of how the switch to 3D would be received. Back then, Preston said the following:
“Hyper Light was a way for me to get started, it was a way for me to be more grounded and put together a crew and understand, can I do this? Can I actually make games? And so having answered that question, then the natural next step for me was something in 3D. Can I put something out there that really opens up the world and makes you feel like you can truly escape into something, a creation that is otherworldly, that you otherwise wouldn't have the experience of?”
Since 2021, Heart Machine has endured layoffs and launched a Patreon, and today it has on staff. Preston remains at the studio's core, still testing new concepts.
At GDC 2025, he said, “We've done overhead stuff with Drifter back in the day, and then fully 3D was a big jump. I wanted to do something sidescrolling, because there's a lot of different, unique challenges there that are fun to tackle. That perspective for how we do art, and mixing our 3D stuff with a 2D plane, there's a lot of cool opportunities there. Something like Inside was a good point of inspiration, seeing what a smaller team can do with atmospheric chops. And we're pretty good on those fronts.”
Possessor(s) is due to hit PC and PS5 in 2025, published by Devolver Digital.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/possessors-is-a-game-about-hot-demons-and-other-things-170016014.html?src=rss
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