This one qualifies as something a bit unusual in the gaming department.

It's an announcement trailer for a new aquatic action roleplaying game called Glaciered in which you play a post-apocalyptic dino-bird.

Without reading any details, our immediate reaction was "Oooh, it's another Subnautica" but the trailer deftly disabused us of that idea.

It looks - broadly speaking - more like an underwater Elden Ring.

Readers of our blog may have caught us heaping adoration upon Subnautica, in no small part for it being a challenging and satisfying non-lethal game without weapons.

We strongly prefer that or Cyberpunk 2077's optional non-lethality to what amounts to non-stop slaughterfests.

But slaughterfests being the norm we don't completely rule them out.

And this one looks incredible.

In addition to the underwater setting, you're not playing a human.

Rather you're a Tuai:

An evolved bird species that have adapted to the glaciered ocean environment. The avian nostrils have transformed into wide holes on the chest to take in water, allowing for complete underwater respiration using dissolved oxygen. The old air sacs – birds’ highly efficient respiratory organs – have evolved into “heat sacs”, which give the Tuai the ability to not just extract oxygen during respiration, but to also capture latent heat in water or release body heat. Their wings also secrete a unique substance used in exchanging heat, which reacts with seawater to crystallize and adhere it to their bodies. These “crystalline wings” store heat or cold extracted from the heat sacs, which the Tuai can then access as needed. Having evolved a unique metabolic system that makes them Earth’s only “variable-blooded” species, the Tuai can instantly change their body temperature according to the level of activity required, as well as switch between active and dormant states. This extremely efficient metabolism has dramatically reduced their need for food and increased their lifespan. The youngest live for thousands of years, while some have lived for hundreds of thousands of years.

Colour us excited.

Speaking of colour, the trailer and artwork looks a bit monochromatic which might be realistic but they speak of the game having different ecosystems and:

Aquatic plants grow from glacier skies and colorful, bioluminescent fish light the seafloor.

Gosh.

That's not a word we use lightly.

If like Elden Ring or the Elder Scrolls games it employs some equivalent of a mana system and there are no cooldowns for abilities, we might literally swoon.

Even if they do include cooldowns it's a sure bet that someone will make a mod to fix that.

Needless to say we will be keeping a very close eye on this one.

Glaciered is being developed for PC (Steam).

[ Main Image: Glaciered. Credit: Studio Snowblind. ]

References

Glaciered. Homepage. Studio Snowblind. (viewed July 27, 2022)

Steam. Glaciered. Studio Snowblind. (viewed July 27, 2022)

Studio Snowblind (July 26, 2022). Glaciered - Official Announcement Trailer. YouTube.