Samsara is a gorgeous portal-hopping puzzle game, due next year

Samsara is a lovely-looking puzzle game whose world is comprised of two Stranger Things-like mirrored dimensions—with portals, echoes, and block placement. Having sunk countless hours into Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Football Manager 2018 of late, this one looks right up my street. 

Due at some stage in "early 2018", Samsara sees players guiding protagonist Zee around 77 realms spanning six different realms. 

"Deceptively simple mechanics conceal rich and complex interactions that involve positioning, pathfinding, gravity, balance, timing, redirection and teleportation," says New Zealand developer Marker in a statement, "with Samsara’s significant twist: everything added in the upside down world of Zee’s mysterious shadow below reflects in the world above." 

All of that, looks like this:

With that, your goal is to steer Zee, and their shadowed echo, to safety in each of the game's beautifully hand-crafted levels—avoiding the "pool" that acts as a buffer between its upper and lower dimensions. 

"What makes Samsara so compelling is that the player uses very simple mechanics to solve increasingly intricate problems that involve all kinds of interactions between Zee, Zee’s echo and the detailed, interactive environments," says the game's senior producer Alex Humphries. "Progression has been carefully tuned to ensure players experience the same awakening as Zee and the shadow as they escape from Samsara."  

Samsara is without a hard release date as yet, however is expected in early 2018 for PC on Windows 10 and Steam.