Gaming

ANOMALITH, scored by Elden Ring’s composer, leads FURYU’s Steam Next Fest bet on broken worlds

FURYU opens Steam Next Fest demos for its gravity-bending survival shooter and the Alice-inspired roguelike CRYMELIGHT
Cassian Vale
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Horror has always found its best ideas in places that stop obeying their own rules: the corridor that runs on too long, the stairwell that delivers you back to the floor you just left. ANOMALITH builds an entire game on that feeling. FURYU’s new survival shooter, developed by Winning Entertainment Group, the studio formerly known as Natsume Atari, sends its heroine into “Otherworlds”, spatial anomalies where an apartment block’s gravity runs upside down and a shopping street never reaches its end. It is a liminal-space nightmare dressed in Showa-era retro, and it comes with an unusual pedigree: Yuka Kitamura, the composer behind Elden Ring, is writing the score, and Romeo Tanaka, creator of Humanity Has Declined, is writing the scenario.

YouTube video

That world is now playable. For Steam Next Fest, the Japanese publisher has opened demos for two games that could hardly sit further apart: ANOMALITH and CRYMELIGHT, a roguelike built on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Both arrive on the momentum of Tokyo Game Show, where, according to the announcement, the reception pushed their combined Steam wishlists past two hundred thousand. FURYU marked the milestone with the video above, a thank-you message from ANOMALITH’s Reona Minazuki and Arisa Hanato.

Reona is the game’s spine. An investigator awakened after ten years asleep inside one of the anomalies, she returns with an uncanny sensitivity to the Otherworlds and a lost friend to find. The release cites Resident Evil and the Backrooms as touchstones, and the design reads like a negotiation between the two: scarce resources, customisable weapons and 12 upgradeable powers on one side, spaces that refuse geometry on the other. Between dives, Reona returns to base to piece together the mysteries, her ties to the rest of the cast and the nature of each anomaly.

Reona Minazuki fires on a humanoid anomaly inside a subway car in ANOMALITH
Image: FURYU CORPORATION

CRYMELIGHT is the latest entry in FURYU’s CRY line of dark bishōjo action, and it takes Lewis Carroll somewhere stranger than the nursery. Alice wakes with no memory of who she is, sets out from the Tea Party Hall into a death game born of madness, and must confess and confront the sins she has committed. Wonderland’s cast returns reimagined: a childish White Rabbit, a mysterious girl named Mary, a Cheshire who brandishes a blood bag, a gentle yet ruthless Mad. Combat turns on the Wonder Dimension, a field that boosts power and speed, and a Poker System that deals five random skill cards, so no two fights play out the same way.

Alice stands among the chairs and cakes of the Tea Party Hall in CRYMELIGHT
Image: FURYU CORPORATION

The demos are playable through October 26. ANOMALITH launches on October 28 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 at $49.99, with a $69.99 Digital Deluxe edition that adds an 80-page digital art book, a mini-soundtrack and a DLC set; PlayStation 5 pre-orders include 48-hour early access. CRYMELIGHT follows on November 4 on the same platforms at $19.99, or $39.99 for the Deluxe Edition. FURYU has also confirmed Steam collaborations, ANOMALITH with the cyberpunk immersive sim Peripeteia and CRYMELIGHT with Garden of Witches, Magical Princess and Eternal Palace Sakura, with details to come.

For a company that started out making photo-sticker booths, it is a telling pair of bets. One game breaks physics, the other breaks a children’s classic, and both wager that players want to get lost in worlds that have stopped making sense.

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