Small town murder-mystery adventure Rainswept gets a release date and a new trailer

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Rainswept, as Austin told us a year ago, is a mystery adventure game set in the small town of Pineview, where detective Michael Anderson has gone to investigate the cold-blooding killings of Christopher Green and Diane Miller. At the time, it was expected to be out later in 2018; now it's 2019 and developer Frostwood Interactive has announced that it will launch on February 1.

The story of Rainswept, laced with "themes of love, relationships and unresolved trauma," is told from multiple perspectives through cutscenes, flashbacks, and dream sequences, and multiple-choice dialog interactions with "small-town personalities." Through it all, it falls to you to determine the truth: Were the deaths of Chris and Diane the result of a murder-suicide, as the rumors whisper, or is something more sinister going on?

(My money's on more sinister: "The further he pursues the case, the more his own past shall come back to haunt him," the Steam listing says. "And the closer his own sanity will be pushed to the edge.")

The trailer is promisingly weird in the way of good indie games, and happily the Rainswept demo released last year remains available at Itch.io. It won't have up-to-the-minute polish and features, but as a way to get a sense of whether or not this is for you, it's hard to go wrong for the price. You can dig deeper into the mystery at rainsweptgame.com.

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.