A new Paradox trailer teases a Rusty Lake detective mystery

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The Rusty Lake game/film crossover Paradox went to Kickstarter in May and more than doubled its €15,000 goal, ending up with more than €34,715 in pledges. And unlike a lot of Kickstarter campaigns, it's going to come reasonably close to its estimated release target: The developers have dropped a new trailer and announced that both the game and the film will be out on September 20.

The Rusty Lake games are point-and-click puzzle-adventures with bizarre, macabre environments and twists: They're not exactly horror, but they're occasionally spooky and always creepy as hell. Paradox will continue that tradition with the tale of infamous detective Dale Vandermeer, who is trapped by an old foe in an "ominous" room with no memory of how he got there. But it will be accompanied by a short film that will tell essentially the same story, but from a different, live-action perspective.

The game will be broken into two chapters, one free and one premium, with the free chapter following the same route as the film for "a matching experience." But the film and the game will work as entirely separate media, and it doesn't matter if you watch the film or play the game first—or even if you skip the film entirely.

"Both media compliment and strengthen each other," Rusty Lake co-creator Robin Ras explained. "For the movie it will of course be a greater experience if you already know the series. What's cool is that you will find a lot of hints in the movie that can be used for the in-game achievements."

More information on Paradox (full title Cube Escape: Paradox, but that seems kind of unnecessarily confusing), and the strange world of Rusty Lake in general, is up at rustylake.com. If you haven't sampled the strangeness of the Rusty Lake series before, there are a number of free games to play there as well. Cube Escape: Paradox and Paradox: A Rusty Lake Film will both be available on Steam.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.