Recompile
This hack-happy Metroidvania’s raw energy powers our curiosity
PC
The dash hits us like a ton of bricks. Our enemy doesn’t get off lightly either. Plucked from a fizzling orb atop a staircase of shattered cubes, the ability allows us to barrel directly into a laser-eyed sentry turret, smashing it apart. But for us, the real impact is in the animation, not its result. Pressing the dash button results in a precious few frames of windup – anticipation and pressure crackling like electricity – before the movement unleashes itself, searing across the screen. There’s something about that tiny delay that makes the power we’ve just acquired feel even more significant, the precocious little rocket punch raring to go every single time.
It makes a lot of sense: Recompile is a Metroidvania in which you play as a humanoid distillation of pure energy, a rogue piece of code. Part precision platformer, part shooter and part hacking puzzler, it’s certainly compelling to control, even at this early stage of development. The open-ended level we enter is a wasteland of strange code
rearranging itself into new shapes – in a purely visual sense, we hasten to add, the glitchy fog of war retreating the further we run. Tapping jump lets us tumble nimbly through the air and avoid incoming fire from skittering cuboid turrets.
Our first method of fighting back against the pests is a lightning gun, aimed with the left trigger and fired with the right. The effect is deliciously sci-fi, a web of electricity coursing over our target. We shock it again, and again. For several moments, we wonder whether this isn’t some kind of stun gun instead of a damage-dealing weapon. Eventually, however, after 15 or 20 shots, our enemy explodes. Our demo handler admits that they may have underestimated the damage values somewhat for this particular build.
Then again, the currently underpowered gun is ample encouragement to explore and experiment with Recompile’s other elements. After collecting the thrilling dash ability next, we’re not sure we’d want to go back to the peashooter even if it were fixed, the melee smash so mighty that we’re content to bash through enemies in an endless chain of brutality. The double jump ability we find later lets us spring higher before we fall back down to the ground in a perfect simulacrum of a superhero landing, shockwaves rippling out from our kneeling avatar as the camera trembles. But there’s a catch: during one timed platforming challenge which we begin by starting up a circuit’s flow, we abuse the double jump to try to reach the pinnacle faster, and soon discover that the recovery time on the landing is actively hampering our effort. Precision and restraint is the key.
In future Recompile puzzles, however, we’ll have something else on our side: the ability to hack enemies and aspects of the environment. We’re shown a brief glimpse of the interface, although it’s not fully implemented just yet. A button press causes the screen to pulse into a blue overlay, UI elements superimposed upon it as we coldly examine our enemies’ health bars, hostility levels, aggro status and their projected paths across the level. A special kind of flora, harvested using the lightning gun, will help power the ability. And you’ll definitely want to keep it topped up, as we’re told you’ll even be able to turn enemies against each other.
With multiple ways to defeat foes, move past obstacles and solve puzzles, your actions will affect the fate of your bright little sliver of machine sentience. There are six variations planned in total: the exact nature of the technological singularity you achieve will depend on your specific approach. It seems
Recompile’s gently systemic, sandbox-style levels will prove arresting even beyond the gorgeous shimmer of voxels – and that dash. We’re still recovering.
In future we’ll have the ability to hack enemies and aspects of the environment