Paste a map of Uppsala, Sweden to the bottom of your bathtub, fill your bath with extra-bony gumbo, then strap on a scuba mask and rhythmically stick your head beneath the surface, and you'll have something like the experience of playing Solbrand - "a slow burn pseudo-historical puzzle-adventure that'll take you back, down, and more than a little out there." For best results, conduct your bath tub experiment on a day so hot that the sun is literally shrieking. Don't have access to a bath, gumbo, a map of Uppsala, or a shrieking sun? Hey, no shame. That's what videogame trailers are for.

Solbrand — Announce Trailer Watch on YouTube

It's been a while since I've laid eyes on an interface 'em up as swish as this. The gist is that you're the "Spook" in charge of a small marine research vessel, sometime in the distant future. You're navigating a sunken city awash with "scientific breakthroughs and mad eccentrics, restless sea monsters and evil doctors, mythical poetry and long-forgotten gods".

You are here because you need to debunk a rumour about some kind of never-ending bike race, on behalf of "influential offshoots of the first champion", whose "spandex pockets run surprisingly deep". I enjoy this Belleville Rendevous-esque daftness inasmuch as I can't figure out how it synchs with the more familiar cosmic horror devices above.

Based on the Steam description, Solbrand plays a bit like In Other Waters and, argh, this other underwater mech-based exploration sim with a top-down view that I can't remember - something-naut? Handles a bit like Steel Battalion? Please figure this out in the comments. Anyway, like that, but with sporadic first-person diving bits.

By default, you'll drift across a mildewed expanse of streets and buildings such as the Imperfektum - a real-world student housing complex, apparently - and the Blackened Cathedral. The map nests within a sort of Clancified geode of light-up dials and buttons. You can initiate scan waves that ripple and cleanse the parchment, and adjust depth of field to bring objects into focus. When you want to investigate a location, you engage probe view to swoop in and behold it as a ghostly 3D expanse.

Perhaps you'll find a document or artefact of some kind, like a semaphore codex or an advert for velocipedes (primordial bikes). If you find human remains, you can "tune into" them to discourse with restless spirits. "Get to know their fates, make bonds, quibble about metre, catch them in lies, and tease out forgotten truths," the Steam page adds.

You've also got a surface-level support crew of living human characters, including a Tinker, Worder and Shimmer. I like this game's language. Here is another excerpt from the lore: "Earth is sunk 'neath the boiling sea, and the sun has made many a mind unusual." That would be the sun that won't stop screaming.

Image credit: Dead People Dreaming

Solbrand doesn't have a release date as yet - no big surprise, given that the project began in April this year. Development studio Dead People Dreaming are actually based in Uppsala, and consist mostly/entirely of Mattias Astenvald, former art director for Indiana Jones And The Great Circle.

This is Astenvald's debut indie release, and a project close to his heart. He himself was born in Skogstibble, a village outside Uppsala, and the game channels his enthusiasm for local history.

"There is an unending list of interesting, meaningful, funny, touching, or inspiring marks made by real people and events but that I believe very few know about," Astenvald writes on the official site." It strikes me how strange it is that in this digital age I can know so much about the goings-on across the globe, yet almost nothing of where I actually live -- despite there being so much that would evidently enrich a life!" The blog includes a chunk of locally-brewed runic verse. I fear I must interview this man. Amongst other things, I'm curious to learn about possible connections with the gaudier archaeology of the Indiana Jones game.

Closing note: Solbrand reminds me somewhat of Stasis: Bone Totem, though it doesn't seem nearly as icky.