HoYoverse, the global brand behind the mega-hit open-world RPG Genshin Impact, has officially announced a new open-world game titled Varsapura. The reveal, which included a detailed 31-minute gameplay demo, immediately drew comparisons to Remedy Entertainment’s popular 2019 action-adventure title, Control, due to its surreal, unsettling atmosphere and bureaucratic paranormal themes. Varsapura represents a shift for the developer, moving toward a more realistic, near-future urban setting while keeping a focus on action-adventure and character abilities.
Key Takeaways
- Varsapura is the new open-world game from HoYoverse, the developer of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.
- The game is built using Unreal Engine 5 and features a realistic art style for the world, though characters retain a slight anime influence.
- The setting is a modern, rainy city dealing with a parapsychological force called Mind Rot that corrupts reality and spawns monsters.
- Gameplay involves the protagonist joining the SEAL (Shadow Emergency Alliance), an agency dedicated to containing these mind-bending events.
- The overall aesthetic and theme of a secret agency dealing with supernatural occurrences strongly resembles the style and world of Remedy’s Control.
Setting and Atmosphere Remind Players of Control
The game’s setting is a near-future city environment where reality itself appears unstable. The central conflict revolves around Mind Rot, a dark, infectious substance that contaminates locations and seems to erode the world. This mysterious force acts as both an environmental hazard and a source for the game’s enemy types.
Players take on the role of an applicant to the Shadow Emergency Alliance (SEAL), a government-like organization dedicated to monitoring and reversing Mind Rot events. The gameplay demo showed the protagonist going through psychological evaluations and interviews, similar to the bureaucratic and mysterious tone set by the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) in Remedy’s Control. Control is known for its brutalist architecture, shifting environments, and the deep lore surrounding the FBC, which hunts down Objects of Power. Varsapura seems to capture a similar sense of psychic strangeness within an otherwise normal-looking organization.
The protagonist, reportedly codenamed “Hollowone,” begins as a SEAL operative, eventually engaging in fast-paced action combat. HoYoverse has developed the game on Unreal Engine 5, giving it a visual style that pushes for a more realistic aesthetic than the developer’s previous titles, which typically feature cel-shaded anime graphics. However, the characters themselves still have distinct anime-influenced faces. This mixture of realistic urban backdrops with stylized characters creates a unique look.
Gameplay Details
The 31-minute demo provided a solid look at the game mechanics. The combat system features fast-paced action where the main character uses an umbrella in various ways, for both melee attacks and ranged damage. Similar to other HoYoverse titles, players will control a squad of characters and can swap between them during battle, a system not typically present in Control. One character in the demo uses books for their special attacks.
The open-world exploration is set in a large city, which many fans speculate might be inspired by Singapore, given the potential Sanskrit origin of the name Varsapura (City of Rain). Crucially, the demo showed a driving sequence, confirming that players can use vehicles to navigate the expansive environment, a feature common in open-world games. The game also includes RPG-style dialogue choices, where specific character attributes like Empathy or Deception may influence the outcome of conversations.
HoYoverse, originally known as miHoYo and headquartered in Shanghai, is currently hiring for the Varsapura project across its offices in Shanghai, Singapore, and Los Angeles. No official release date or platforms have been announced, suggesting the game remains early in its development cycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is Varsapura a gacha game like Genshin Impact?
A. HoYoverse has not officially confirmed the monetization model. The gameplay demo showed a system where players can swap between squadmates, suggesting a character collection system, which could be either a traditional unlock system or the gacha model used in their other games.
Q. What is the ‘Mind Rot’ in Varsapura?
A. Mind Rot is a parapsychological force in the game’s world. It is a dark, infectious substance that affects reality, contaminates areas, and creates the monsters players fight.
Q. Which game engine is HoYoverse using for Varsapura?
A. HoYoverse is developing Varsapura using Unreal Engine 5, which is known for its ability to produce highly realistic and detailed graphics.
