The time-bending espionage adventure from the team behind A Fisherman’s Tale will release in Early Access. Read on for the full details and our hands-on impressions from the Game Developers Conference.
Game Information & Release Date
Hot off releasing a new gameplay trailer at the VR Games Showcase, Innerspace’s Spymaster will come to Meta Quest and PC VR as an Early Access release on May 7. The game can be wishlisted now on your platform of choice.
Spymaster is a quirky spy adventure where players race against time to complete high stakes espionage missions using multiple secret agents and tools. The ‘quirk’ is the time element. Using a device called a C.A.S.S.E.T.T.E., time can be rewound or moved forward to make corrections during a run and hand items off between agents.
Our Demo Impressions
We had the chance to play Spymaster for about thirty minutes at the Game Developers Conference earlier this month. We were not allowed to film our gameplay and all of the footage and screenshots in this article were provided by Innerspace. I played the tutorial and the first mission of the game.
The game opens with a tutorial level explaining its movement system, including jumping, climbing, and physically pumping my arms to run. Two agents start on opposite ends of an obstacle course. Upon selecting an agent, the game shifts from an overhead third person view to the first person view of that agent. Then it was a simple matter of navigating obstacles to reach the center and hit a button.
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Spymaster Tutorial Level footage provided by Innerspace
After completing this for the first agent, I was introduced to the aforementioned C.A.S.S.E.T.T.E. device, a wristwatch on my left arm that I simply turned left or right to move time backwards and forward. I rewound time, selected the second agent, and completed his run to the center. In terms of mechanics, everything felt smooth and anyone with experience running around in a VR game will feel comfortable here.
After the tutorial, I was off to my first true mission, preventing a bomb from blowing up a train. This level opens with the train being destroyed before I went back into time using the C.A.S.S.E.T.T.E. to save the day. This mission also introduced the concept of secondary objectives. Each agent has their own objectives and I would imagine these will differ more and more as the game progresses. The most interesting thing was how death is handled. When you die, the recording of the mission simply stops and lets me rewind to any point during my run to ‘fix’ it, as opposed to respawning from a predetermined save point.
The ‘left’ agent, Tic, starts on a cliffside overlooking a tunnel before hopping down to the train emerging from said tunnel. I died immediately here, not dodging quickly enough to avoid a rail sign. Then I simply rewound to just before the sign, successfully avoided it, and made it to my objective point.
Spymaster Train Mission
The second agent, a robot, simply moves through train cars to the center. This run was less interesting and I think that was on purpose because this agent had two secondary objectives: high five Tic and photograph a document. Even after successfully completing the mission, I could still rewind to get the secondary objectives done. Completionists will love this mechanic as it will save time replaying entire missions repeatedly to get everything done.
Visually, Spymaster has the same vibrant low poly look of The Fisherman’s Tale games and Maskmaker, so there’s not a lot of detail to admire, but everything looked sharp. The voice acting was fine too. Overall, I walked away wanting to play more and that’s all a good demo needs to accomplish.
It does lack the immediate charm both Fisherman’s Tales, Maskmaker, and One True Path presented, but this is a different, decidedly more high stakes scenario than any of those games. I did, however, find myself wishing there was some banter between the two agents on the mission, just to introduce a bit of personality to them. Innerspace’s strength is in its quirky gameplay mechanics and characterization and I felt like I only got half of that equation. This is something I hope to get in the full game.
Spymaster can be wishlisted now on Steam and Quest ahead of its May 7 Early Access release.
