The makers of Life Is Strange and Jusant return with a new science fiction adventure that’s been made with the help of actual scientists.
It’s 2062, Earth’s climate has broken down to the point that it’s starting to become unliveable, and the European Space Agency (ESA) has identified a potential lifeline in the form of Persephone, an icy planet nestling in the Kuiper Belt, right on the outskirts of the solar system. Apart from it being habitable, that’s not an entirely implausible set-up for a story, in what is a surprisingly realistic hard science fiction tale.
Aphelion’s developer, Don’t Nod, has been working closely with the ESA to make sure the game’s technology and setting are as close to our likely future as possible, and the fact-based possibility of a new planet in our solar system is one such prediction. You’ll also find authentic looking spacesuits, airlocks, and other hardware, only this time with a European provenance, rather than coming from NASA, which tends to be the basis for most games and films (Don’t Nod are French).
We got a hands-on preview of the first and fourth chapters of the upcoming game, which follows a mission to explore the newly discovered world. Its heroine, Ariane Montclaire is an astrobiologist tasked with gaining an understanding of its ecosystem. Unfortunately, the rest of the crew were killed when their ship crashed into the planet’s surface, leaving only her and an injured crew mate, Thomas Cross, still alive.
At the beginning of the game Thomas is missing, leaving Ariane to escape from the dangling, still burning carcass of their spaceship. The opening section is clearly inspired by Tomb Raider and Uncharted, as you slide down a lengthy portion of the ship’s tilted hull, avoiding obstacles and flaming debris, before desperately clinging onto a ledge at the end, clambering from one handhold to the next in search of somewhere flat to stand.
It provides a useful tutorial, which includes the need to grasp ledges when you leap towards them. Ariane doesn’t automatically latch on, which along with occasional QTEs, adds a small extra dimension to your precarious traversal. You’ll also discover her grappling hook and winch, which let you lock onto predefined points in the wreckage and landscape to hoist yourself up, avoiding tumbling chunks of machinery as you go.
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Although best known for Life Is Strange, Don’t Nod’s first release, well over a decade ago, was Remember Me, an action game with a strong preference for platforming and melee. They also made Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden, an emotional action role-player with notably stylish combat, so they’re no strangers to games that go well beyond conversation and decision making.
That said, in this pre-release build Ariane’s movements and interactions with the environment can feel a little wooden. That’s mitigated by some beautifully observed and animated close-ups of her face, as she strains her way past obstacles, her voice betraying the stress and emotion of those moments. She’s a highly trained professional astronaut, but this was not the mission she signed up for.
Not knowing whether anyone else is even alive at this point, she records voice logs in case someone finds them, something her colleague, Thomas does as well, each unwittingly keeping the other in the loop about their activities, even though to start with they both think they’re the sole survivor of the disaster. Earth is so distant, their only hope of living through this is to help themselves.
There’s a clear intent to make ice planet Persephone the third – if not the main – character in Aphelion. Its stark beauty and craggy depths providing a distinctive backdrop, framing its heroes’ orange and grey space suits against its snowy reaches and black rocky promontories. It also helps to establish a lonely, frontier atmosphere. Jumping straight into Chapter 4, it becomes evident that Ariane is not alone on Persephone, and it’s not Thomas who’s quietly stalking her.
Falling through a melting sheet of ice, she ends up beneath the planet’s surface, where she first encounters Nemesis, a life form that, as it name implies, does not want to be friends. It’s a massive, wispy snake-like entity with pointed jaws and a glitching, discontinuous motion like something from a horror movie.
When it’s close to Araine, the screen gets lines of digital interference, like a visual representation of Silent Hill’s radio static, which also warned of the proximity of monsters. She soon discovers that Nemesis is blind, and that it’s drawn to even the slightest sound, leaving her to try and escape to the surface as slowly and silently as she can.
It’s spooky in the depths, and she soon finds herself in an ice maze, picking her way through narrow gaps in the glacier, seeking handholds and winch points in its creaking depths. It’s the very last place you’d want your suit’s head torch to start cutting out, plunging you into total darkness, and that’s of course exactly what happens.
Given the current trend amongst publishers for creating live service games, with so many trying and failing to launch the new Fortnite, it’s great to see smaller publishers still making ambitious single-player narrative driven games. Even a brief glimpse of Aphelion is enough to see the incredible care and attention that’s already gone into its development. We look forward to exploring more of Persephone later this year.
Formats: Xbox Series X/S (previewed), PlayStation 5, and PC
Publisher: Don’t Nod
Developer: Don’t Nod
Release Date: Winter 2026
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