Playstack is a name you might not be familiar with. The publisher has only been around since 2016 and really only begun to make a name for themselves late last year, when Soulslike, Mortal Shell, turned out to be a major hit. Next up for the team is The Entropy Centre, this time being developed by Stubby Games.
Now, it doesn’t take the observatory skills of a genius detective to figure out some similarities between The Entropy Centre and a certain cult-classic, innovative, and generally loved puzzle game series developed quite a bit earlier by Valve.
In the works for the last two years, Stubby Games’ effort is being described as a first-person time manipulation puzzle game, unofficially defining a lot of its core features and themes from Portal & Portal 2 (quite the significant number of concepts). These include the plot similarities of a female protagonist beginning her journey in an abandoned science-research facility (a space station this time) accompanied only by robotic friends and foes. Soon after, one such robotic companion becomes an extension of your own physical body, as it takes the persona of your futuristic time manipulation gun – your primary tool of puzzle solving throughout the decrepit and overgrown facility.
Despite the incredibly high benchmark expectation set by the Portal series, Playstack seems to be pretty confident of this one. There’s a demo available now on PC, and the full release will be November 3 on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, and PC (via Steam). Let’s just hope the game can capture the personality and storytelling credibility of the series that inspired it.
