Heart Machine's next game isn't what I expected at all, but I love it

At GDC 2025, I watched one of the early levels of drills Ownerthe next game from the Heart Machine. The studio usually plays action games, but it blends some other things-2016 Ultra-light drifter With RPG elements, 2021 Sun gray It is a platform for adventure, and in 2025 Super fault It is a cooperative Roguelike. The owner is Metroid, or, as the Heart Machine prefers to call it a search sex game (honestly, it's a better term for the genre).

A side roller, the owner thinks you play two roles: Luca, a teenage girl and Rehm, the demon possesses her. I didn't see the events that led to their partnership, but the Heart Machines team explained that the owner's starts with Luca being trapped in a cross-two-dimensional disaster that ripped a hole in the sky and killed everyone she loved – just because of the intervention of the strange corner man she now in her, who survived.

Rehm also gave Luca artificial legs (I don't know what happened to her original legs, but I think the full game will give us a hint) so that she can jump high and fall from any height, while Luca uses these new prosthetics to navigate the now-ruled city in a hope of escaping it and learning more about the disaster that happened. The duo often talk about their basically different views on the demons and the companies responsible for most of the things in the city, thus alleviating much of the loneliness I expected in other search action games.

Thanks to Rehm, Luca was able to hold her own in a world that wanted to kill her. The battle is directed at the possessed objects and the people of the city – the fence is more than Rehm destroying all kinds of things in the metropolis. When Luca walks past it, people are surprised to pretend that a potted plant is prevalent with completely lifeless and harmless plants, and developers say many demons will adopt this strategy by hiding it in their eyes by pretending to be seemingly normal areas. When the battle does break out, it looks a lot like playing Super Smash Brothers, with the focus on combos and air juggling. It looks more attractive than the Hyper Leaker Breaker, but I'm not doing the same with the owner, so I can't say one way or another.

Like the genre of the same era, Luca unlocked additional abilities over time that opened up new options in combat and opened up new realms of the map. I didn't have a chance to see this, but it sounds like an upgrade at work Hollow Knight,,,,, Nine sols,,,,, Super silverAnd other similar games, with an open, interconnected world that allows players to explore in any direction they can access.

Style-wise, the Owner(S) is the biggest difference from the Super Light Rafter visuals – not bad anyway, but since every subsequent match of the studio followed this artistic direction very closely, it was all surprising. The colors are of course similar, but the owner(S) character looks hand-painted, with the animated lines and more flashy colors making the attacks and actions look like something in a comic or comic book. It's cool, at least in the artistic direction, owner is my favorite scheming game. It's not what I expected, but the game has made me equally appealing to me and I can't wait to jump into it myself later this year.

Owners will boot for PS5 and PC sometime in 2025.