Developer Rusty Lake has released 14 games under the Rusty Lake and Cube Escape banner to date - some fully fledged premium offerings, others free-to-play companion pieces - each delivering a deliciously surreal, narratively interconnected slice of casual point-and-click puzzling with a room escape slant. The Past Within is Rusty Lake’s first attempt at a co-operative adventure, expanding the series’ familiar formula, both spacially and temporally, as two players work together across different timelines - one located in the past, the other in the future - to solve the mysteries surrounding recurring series character Albert Vanderboom. Players, teaming up across any combination of supported platforms, will need to communicate in order to discern how the environments in their respective timelines are connected (environments, incidentally, are rendered in both 2D and 3D in another series first), then use the knowledge gained from one timeline to solve puzzles and progress in the other. Previous games in the Rusty Lake and Cube Escape series have been enormously engaging (Rusty Lake: Roots remains a magnificent high point), and The Past Within looks to be one of the studio’s most ambitious outings yet. PC players looking to get a taste of its co-operative action ahead of its full release on 2nd November can find a demo on Steam.
