Do you ever have that dream where a giant metal rolling pin is rumbling across the world, destroying everything in its path? You know, the dream where you’re a strange two-legged Spore creature which can change shape and gain abilities by inhaling other creatures through its trunk. The one with the red and purple alien planet, and the giant chattering teeth enemy, and the huge insect creatures. Oh, hang on a moment, it’s not a dream! Silly me. It’s a game: The Eternal Cylinder.
The Eternal Cylinder preview
- Developer: Ace Team
- Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
- Platform: Played on PC
- Availability: Closed beta launches today on the Epic Games Store, and welcomes anyone who signs up on The Eternal Cylinder website. Runs until 25th March. Full game coming 2021 on PC and consoles (PlayStation and Xbox judging by logos on the website).
It’s a game by Chilean developer Ace Team, which burst onto the scene with the strikingly surreal Zeno Clash in 2009 (and then Rock of Ages after). Remember that? The Eternal Cylinder is so similar! It’s a kaleidoscopically colourful and bizarre world full of huge creatures a bit like snails and insects, and some I just have no idea what they’re supposed to be. But here they are, in a world of big stone towers and beams of light, and strange planets in the background. And dominating everything: a terrifyingly massive metal cylinder that moves.
This is how you wake up in the game. You are a small two-legged creature with a trunk and a grand purpose, you’re told, and the very second you come to life, you have to run from the cataclysmic cylinder rumbling behind you. We’re talking about a horizon-spanning thing here, which destroys absolutely anything in its path. You, a relative flea to its massiveness, do not stand a chance. Eventually, however, it stops, and when it does, you can begin nosing around.
I say ‘nosing’ because that is very much how you interact with the world: with your trunk. You can suck and you can blow, like a garden vacuum, and anything you inhale goes into your small inventory where, if you like, you can eat it. And this bit is vital, because not only do you need to eat, and to drink, but the things you eat can trigger mutations. Very early on you eat a glowing essence left by a grasshopper-like creature to mutate big, hoppy legs, which let you jump out of the place you’re trapped in.