Game: Sublustrum (“Sub-LOO-strum”)
Developer: Brickworks Games (Limassol, Cyprus)
Publisher: HypeTrain Digital
Genre: First-Person Psychological Adventure
Open Playtest: Chapter One — from October 12, 2026
Platform: PC (Steam)
Sign-ups: Open now
🎧 Sublustrum’s first chapter opens to players on October 12 in an open playtest — and you can apply now on Steam. It’s a psychological adventure where sound isn’t just atmosphere: it’s how you solve the puzzles.
⚖️ A Game That Began as an Album
Most games add music once the world exists. Sublustrum started the other way around.
The original concept was an interactive companion to an album by Anthesteria — a dark ambient project with neoclassical influences, composed by the game’s own creator, Georgy Beloglazov. That music went on to shape both the game’s atmosphere and its visual identity.
It shows in how you play. You’ll tune frequencies, follow voices through static, listen for clues, and interact with machines through sound. Some puzzles push the idea even further — including an entire location that works as one giant musical instrument.
It’s the second game we’ve covered this week where music is the mechanic rather than the soundtrack — but where Songs of Glimmerwick uses it for cosy spellcasting, Sublustrum points it at something far stranger: grief, memory and the subconscious.
Listen closely
Your brother is missing. In his home, you find the machine he was building — a device made to take a person into the depths of the subconscious. And it still works.
HypeTrain Digital and Brickworks Games have announced a partnership on Sublustrum — pronounced “Sub-LOO-strum” — a first-person psychological adventure about mystery, memory and sound, coming to PC.
To mark the partnership, an open playtest for Sublustrum: Chapter One begins on October 12, 2026, alongside the HypeTrain Digital Publisher Sale on Steam. You can apply for the playtest now through the game’s Steam page.
Into the Flickering World
Once restored, your brother’s machine becomes a gateway to the Flickering World — a surreal place shaped by memory, full of elaborate machinery and unsettling spaces that feel familiar but never quite right, and governed by rules you’ll have to work out for yourself.
Inspired by surrealist art, early cinema and psychoacoustics, Sublustrum is ultimately a story about grief and the difficulty of letting go.
🔎 A Deepening Mystery
Follow your missing brother’s trail and discover what lies beyond his final experiment.
📻 Sound as Gameplay
Tune frequencies, follow voices, pick up audio clues and solve puzzles by listening.
🌀 The Flickering World
Surreal, memory-shaped spaces where reality doesn’t always behave as expected.
⚙️ Puzzles in the World
Strange devices and environmental challenges designed to feel like part of the story.
What’s in the Playtest
🧪 Chapter One, From October 12
The open playtest covers the game’s opening chapter and offers a first look at how Sublustrum plays. You’ll explore its first locations, start following the trail your brother left behind, and tackle environmental puzzles where paying attention — especially to sound — is key.
Our advice: wear headphones. A game built around psychoacoustics and following voices through static is going to reward good audio.
A Creator Returns to Where It Started
🔁 From 65 Million Mobile Downloads Back to PC
There’s a lovely personal story behind this one. Sublustrum is a complete reimagining of a 2008 game of the same name — the game that started Georgy Beloglazov’s career. He also created Phobos: 1953.
Since then, his studio Brickworks Games, based in Limassol, Cyprus, has become best known for mobile hits Grim Soul and Cyberika, with its games passing 65 million downloads worldwide.
Now Beloglazov is returning to PC with the game that began it all — rebuilt from the ground up as a fully explorable 3D adventure, by members of the original team. After that much success elsewhere, going back to remake the project that started it all is a striking choice.
It’s also the second narrative-led HypeTrain Digital project we’ve covered recently, following Agent of Strange: Arrival from the makers of Sir Brante.
♿ A Question Worth Asking
When sound is central to solving puzzles, it’s fair to wonder how the game will serve deaf and hard-of-hearing players. HypeTrain and Brickworks haven’t said yet whether there will be visual cues or alternative options for audio-based puzzles. It’s not a criticism — it’s an early playtest — but it’s a design question we’ll be watching, and exactly the kind of feedback a playtest is for.
How to Take Part
📅 Open Playtest From October 12 · Apply Now on Steam
Apply for the Sublustrum: Chapter One open playtest on the game’s Steam page. It begins on October 12, 2026, during the HypeTrain Digital Publisher Sale. No release date or price for the full game has been announced yet.
🧠 Psychological
🎧 Sound-Based Puzzles
🌀 Surreal
🔎 Mystery
⚙️ Machinery
🔁 Reimagining
For more gaming news and reviews, check out our reviews section.
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