Rustmourne Demo Impressions: A Terrifying Tease Of Great Things To Come

Rustmourne’s Steam Next Fest demo was a terrific taste of the upcoming sci-fi horror shooter.

I’ve played several of these Dead Space-like VR adventures in the past like Memoreum and By Grit Alone, both of which were ambitious efforts that came up short in one way or another. Rustmourne, due out in early 2027, nails one crucial element of Visceral Games’ classic formula: a single enemy is enough to unnerve you.

VR games can oftentimes get caught up in ensuring you feel empowered and with survival shooters, that often amounts to throwing scores of easily defeated enemies at you. That very premise flies in the face of the Dead Space formula, where for all but the most elite of players, combat feels like a struggle. The first two enemy types you meet in Rustmourne have no legs and crawl towards you with long robotic arms. Despite that, even with one of them literally being blind and tracking you by sound, they are more intimidating than anything else I’ve faced in VR recently.

You wake up in some sort of chamber in a futuristic warehouse of sorts, impaled with a piece of metal piping that you have to remove. You quickly learn to use your gravity gloves to grab objects from afar or move them out of your way and proceed deeper into the facility until you meet your first blind one, the aforementioned crawling automaton that introduces itself by dropping a body right in front of you. Message received. This thing is no joke. With no way to defend yourself, you’re forced to employ the classic stealth game trope of ‘distract the enemy with a noise opposite the direction you want to go.’

Over the next hour or so of the demo, you are led through the facility by a disembodied voice, gain the ability to flick objects at great force to attack enemies and break through barriers, and acquire your first weapon: a gun that is a dead ringer for Dead Space’s plasma cutter. As soon as you acquire these new defenses, the game ramps up by dispensing with feeding you one enemy at a time. Stand your ground with three crawlers bearing down on you if you dare. Simply backing up won’t work because the crawlers are faster than you.

It’s all wonderfully realized and presented in a dirty, grimy, visually stunning industrial environment. Sound design, a crucial element of games like this, is on point, giving you reason to pause every few steps and go “what was that I just heard?” In terms of story, precious little is offered up here and that’s fine. Your unknown guide hints at enough to keep you intrigued.

I can’t really say much more because there is not a lot of game here. It is very much an extended tutorial. I died often enough to get the very clear message that this game will challenge me and refuse to let me feel at ease at any point. Rustmourne is expected in early 2027 and after playing this demo, it comfortably sits atop my list of most anticipated VR games for next year.