Immersive sim Retrospace, aka '70s System Shock, gets an October release date plus a trailer full of funky guns and sentient black holes

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

Space horror immersive sim RetroSpace will launch on 1st October 2026, developers The Wild Gentlemen and publishers Kwalee have announced. New to RetroSpace? In brief: you are a 3D-printed clone janitor, trapped aboard a space station that has been swallowed by a "sentient black hole". Now, you must deploy a mixture of stealth, violence and swaggering "discopunk" ingenuity as you go up against a bunch of mutant plants and animals, together with the station's own security systems.

The station itself, Aurora, is a metroidvaniac, retro-70s environment with a central, "mostly" peaceful hub and a range of shortcuts and secret paths. It's also stuck between time periods, warping back and forth in a way that seems likely to prove both inconvenient and advantageous.

Speaking of warping, you also get "mutamods" that allow to grow tentacles, possess creatures, and melt into the shadows, at the price of possibly ruining your mind and/or body in other departments. You are also immortal, with Aurora popping out a fresh clone whenever you perish, but your clones may sport "degenerations", and you'll need to reclaim your clobber from your most recent corpse.

I'm looking forward to it? My one concern is that the referential humour might get the better of the ambience. The Wild Gentlemen are otherwise best known for the Chicken Police series, in which a pair of copper cockerels do a Bogart on some crocodiles and insects. They're also the creators of Moses & Plato: Last Train to Clawville, in which you are Sherlock Holmes but a fox. Big on animal motifs and period aesthetics, this lot. Read more about their latest work on Steam.