The Past Within was announced back at the start of 2021. Your aim, and that of your accomplice, is to find out what mysterious goings on have befallen someone called Albert Vanderboom. He’s been important in the series, y’see. You don’t need to know anything about the other Rusty Lake games to play The Past Within. However, if you have played previous games in the series, then you might be intrigued to encounter some of Albert’s relatives during your time travel puzzling. Crossplay is enabled for all versions of The Past Within, so you can play on your laptop while your pal rocks a tablet. The devs say you don’t even need an internet connection as long as you can communicate somehow. It’ll be a mixture of Morse code, semaphore and smoke signals for me. Rusty Lake has been kicking about since 2015, and The Past Within is the 16th game in the series. The new game is Rusty Lake’s first venture into both co-op and 3D environments, and devs Robin Ras and Maarten Looise say they were inspired by the surrealism of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. The Past Within is out on November 2nd on Steam and itch.io. It’s also coming to the App Store and Google Play, and Nintendo Switch at a later date. There’s a demo if you want to give it a go now, too.
