This dystopian free-running sim is set in a brutalist megacity is being codeveloped by one of the designers of last year's best FPS

Anything involving the creators of Straftat is going to be on my radar. The lo-fi 1v1 shooter was crowned the best FPS of 2024, brilliantly condensing '90s style deathmatch into hyper-quick rounds across dozens of creatively designed maps. But Straftat is also one of the best shooters of 2025, too, thanks to the immense amount of support the Lemaitre brothers have poured into, essentially doubling the map count since launch.

Now, one half of Straftat's developers, Léonard Lemaitre, has announced a new game called Vholume, a Mirror's Edge style first-person platformer set in a vast, dystopian city.

While Straftat is the easier reference here, Vholume arguably has more in common with Babbdi, which shares the brutalist aesthetic of both Straftat and Vholume. But was a moody single-player exploration game rather than a frantic multiplayer shooter.

Vholume seems to be a solo experience too, but one that boasts a far more elaborate movement system than Babbdi. A handful of animated gifs on its Steam page show your character leaping, sliding and wall-running through foggy concrete structures. It looks incredibly slick, particularly the way you can snap around corners by leaping from one wall to another.

The structure of Vholume isn't wholly clear, but the story sees you playing as a character called Robert, living in the city of Afro-Eurasia. Your goal is simple, restore your family's revoked ration ticket. But you are obstructed at every turn by the city's impenetrable bureaucracy, which "turns a simple task into an odyssey". The world will apparently feature shortcuts that players can exploit to improve their target times and "break the labyrinthine design", which sounds fun.

Only one of the Lemaitre brothers, Léonard, is working on this game, part of a three-person dev team that also includes Nathan Grange and Niels Tiercelin. It's being published by IronEqual, which is developer and publisher of the 2017 adventure game Over the Moonlight.

There's no release date for Vholume yet. But there was a two-year gap between Babbdi and Straftat, so there's a chance we might see Vholume sometime in 2026. If you can't wait that long to enjoy some Brutalist-coded precision platforming, then I recommend you check out Lorn's Lure, a game of climbing, sliding, and leaping through vast, decaying megastructures that was one of my favourites from last year.

Best laptop games: Low-spec life
Best Steam Deck games: Handheld must-haves
Best browser games: No install needed
Best indie games: Independent excellence
Best co-op games: Better together