Rem Studios presents

ProjectInertia

Real Evolution

A sandbox game set on the African continent, where you shape the world with light instead of consuming it. Built from the engine up by one developer.

Watch the trailer The story Early Access
Build Pre-AlphaIncarnations 16Engine Custom C++Coming to Steam Early Access
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First look

Pre-Alpha Trailer

Project Inertia · Rem Studios · 1:35
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Pre-alpha footage. Everything shown is work in progress. Subscribe on YouTube →

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The game

You are a multidimensional being, living a temporary human experience.

You were never the body.

Althea and Aetherion's unique ability is telepathy

Setting

Africa, rewritten

An open sandbox across the African continent, told through an alternative history.

Core mechanic

Build with light

No hauling dense items or chasing food. You use the power of light to construct and shape the world, and co-create your own reality.

Resources

Regrow, don't strip

Resources aren't just there to be destroyed. You interact with them through consciousness, vibration and thought forms that resonate with the earth, so they grow back and sustain.

Sound

A score that adapts

Original adaptive music that follows what you're doing. Electric guitar, horns and high strings over layered electronic textures.

Progression

Climb the soul ladder

Every run begins at the First Hands. You earn each body above it rung by rung, on two parallel ladders, from stone tools to the rocket and on to the wind.

Trade

Pay in skills

The barter market doesn't want your coin. Traders ask what you can offer and what skills you have.

The story

What the trailer shows

Before the Extreme card, the trailer follows the world from the market at home, through the long night, to Althea's fight with the Devourer. These are its scenes in the order they play, with one moment from the extended trailer after the darkness.

  1. Villagers at the barter market stalls inside the stone wall
    The Great Stone Village · Market day
    Barter on market day

    I don't need your payment.

    "What can you offer?""What skills do you have?"

    Home from space, the village trades on. Its traders deal in what you can do, not what you carry.

  2. Green lights in a row across a dark plain under a rift in the sky
    Rift Zone · The first tear
    The hook

    Fracture consensus reality

    Something is wrong here. The world starts to admit it is not what it looks like.

  3. A rainbow-lit savanna with a glowing figure among acacia trees
    The Prime World · Where the costume comes off
    The awakening

    You were never the body

    You are a multidimensional being living a temporary human experience

    Althea and Aetherion's unique ability is telepathy

    The windspeakers, straight after the barter market.

  4. First person view of a rifle aimed at a winter drake breathing frost over a snowy slope
    The Northern Range · Above the snow line
    The winter drake

    What comes down the mountain

    Jaden the soldier holds the slope. The drake comes down with its mouth already open, and what comes out of it freezes the air. Rifles are new in this world and the drake is not.

  5. A rocket passing a huge golden artificial sun in space
    Open space · Past the agreement
    The artificial sun

    A light nobody can switch off

    The triumphant defeat of your character over darkness. But it also brings disasters that can't be prevented.

    A lamp hung beside the world it was built for. When it surges, the weather it throws at Earth is not something anyone down there can stop.

  6. A violet aurora over still trees at dusk
    The plains · An evening that will not end
    The first hours

    The world goes still

    An aurora where none belongs, a violet dusk, the stillness, and the grid failing city by city.

  7. Faint outlines of houses and rings in a black void
    Every continent · Day two of four
    The long night

    The planetary spiritual darkness

    A darkness where the veil between the physical and spiritual world thins

    Days without light. Old memories come up as shapes that move across the map.

  8. The shapes of the darkness fading as daylight returns over the savanna
    Day four of four · The veil closes
    After the darkness

    A century of trauma, war and fear has been lifted

    On the fourth day the shapes fade, the light comes back over the grass, and what the world carried for a hundred years is gone.

    In the extended trailer
  9. A blinding light over a broken, rainbow-coloured landscape
    The Prime World · The last century of the structure
    Earth changes

    Watch the powers fall

    The powers that held for centuries fall and the earth turns. It has to happen before the incarnation of Althea.

  10. A street between two dark towers in a futuristic city, with a balance scale drawn in the sky
    A country that once said there was no God
    The brotherhood

    The hope of the world

    It was the country that told the world there was no God.

    Now it is the hope of the world.It is building a brotherhood.A new relationship between the individual and the community,a balance between Western materialism and something deeper.
  11. The coils of a giant crystal serpent under a red health bar
    Rift Zone · Where consensus breaks
    The boss

    Althea vs the Devourer

    Her fight, in first person. It ends with the serpent unmade. Then the trailer turns extreme.

The soul ladder

The incarnations

Every incarnation you will live, on two ladders that climb side by side, one of women and one of men. Every spark starts at the bottom. Each rung is an age of the world, and each has something waiting for you.

RungHer incarnationHis incarnation
Rung 1The First HandsFace the ancient golem ANGELAThe First Hands · Melee, survivalI have no words for the wind yet. I have a sharp rock and a long night. ATOUKThe First Hands · Melee, survivalFire is the first thing I did not have to be told twice.
Rung 2Borrowed FireFace the cave spider SKYLAThe Mage · CasterAngela carried the stone. I asked the stone to carry itself. SAMThe Mage · CasterNobody asked me if I wanted to be given it. I would have said yes.
Rung 3The HuntHunt the elephant JENNAThe Archer · Ranged, huntAngela taught me the stone. I taught the stone how to fly. ALLENThe Archer · Ranged, huntI learned the bow by missing. I stayed alive by stopping.
Rung 4The IronFace the minotaur KIRAThe Knight · Melee, ironThe bow keeps its distance. I stopped keeping mine. ROLANDThe Knight · Melee, ironI learned the bow by missing. I learned the sword by not.
Rung 5Hard LightFace the winter dragon FREYAThe Soldier · Ranged, assaultThe bow asked politely. The rifle does not ask. JADENThe Soldier · Ranged, assaultThe bow asked politely. I stopped asking.
Rung 6LaunchFace the rhino ALEANEAThe Rocket Scientist · Mobility, spaceWinter taught me cold. Cold taught me vacuum. Vacuum taught me leave. JASONThe Rocket Scientist · Mobility, spaceI did the maths on staying. Leaving came out cheaper.
Rung 7WindFace Goliatiath ALTHEAThe Windspeaker · Ranged, controlUnique ability · TelepathyI do not break it. I find where it is already breaking, and I agree with it. AETHERIONThe Windspeaker · Ranged, controlUnique ability · TelepathyThe wind was never hers alone. It answers whoever stops demanding.
Their children

The children of Althea and Aetherion won't rely on machinery alone. They will grow up with the language of the wind and the consciousness of the plants.
The next generation · Althea and Aetherion's children

No heavy machinery

Althea and Aetherion's children won't rely on machinery alone. They will show the machine world another way, by learning the language of the wind and the consciousness of the plants. There is no need for heavy machinery.

Off the ladder · Werewolf

The Turned

I stood in vacuum and came back on four legs. Nobody warned me the way up went through this.
Off the ladder · Morph form

The Visitor

I am not a rung on your ladder. I am a skin you can wear.

The worlds · Ideas

Where you will go

Ideas for the places in the game, captured from an in-game cinematic. This is not the trailer above. Pre-alpha, rendered in engine.

A rocket standing beside its launch tower on the savanna at sunset
The Rocket StationThe launch age · Build the way out

Aleanea and Jason, the rocket scientists, build the station in the savanna with their own hands. The flight that follows leaves from something they built.

An astronaut on the Moon facing a lunar base, with Earth and the artificial sun in the sky
The Astronaut on the MoonStanding on the regolith · Build your own light

The rocket scientists are the astronauts too. On the Moon, the camera turns round her to Earth and the lamp somebody hung beside it, with the base and her rocket parked close by.

First person hands working at a tree on the savanna
The First HandsSavanna Province · Craft your first tools
An assembling machine with ingots and chests
The MachineThe Assembling Yard · Outside the wall
Pyramids across a desert plain with cacti
The Afterlife PyramidsThe Burning North
A rocket over a deep blue ocean
The Tempest SeaWest Coast · Cross the Tempest Sea
An industrial city on the seabed
The City Under the SeaThe Tempest Shelf · Forty metres down
A winter scene seen through a virtual reality headset
Simulation ModeEverything that never happened, happened
Ruins on a plain under snowy mountains
The Lost CityThe first house still stands
A long hall in space with planets overhead
The Astral CourtPlead nothing. Be aware.
An astronaut on the Moon beside a parked rocket
The MoonBuild your own light
First person on an orange alien surface with a weapon
VenusThe sulfur floor · Survive the burning draft
A round dry-stone wall enclosing thatched huts
The Great Stone VillageDzimba dze Mabwe · Home to the barter village
A wide desert at the end of the trailer
The Top of the LadderAetherion vs Goliatiath

The build

Made from the engine up

Project Inertia runs on a C++ engine written for this game, with its own tools for parsing music data and bringing in assets.

The soundtrack is made in-house too. Themes start in tracker software and generated MIDI, get arranged and voiced in BandLab, then go into the game through FMOD Studio.

Genre
Sandbox
Engine
Custom C++ engine
Graphics
Realistic 3D
View
First person, whole body
Incarnations
14 on two ladders, plus 2 off the ladder
Audio
FMOD Studio, adaptive
Music tools
UltraBox, Python-generated MIDI, BandLab
Modding
Planned, built in from the start
Build
Pre-alpha
Platform
PC, via Steam

Road to 1.0

Where the game is now

Project Inertia is in pre-alpha. Next is Early Access on Steam: a stable, playable build ahead of the full release.

  1. Now

    Pre-Alpha

    Engine, first environments, sixteen incarnations and the first trailer.

  2. Next

    Early Access

    A paid early access release on Steam. Price to be announced.

  3. Then

    Refine

    Performance, stability and modding support, shaped by player feedback.

  4. Goal

    1.0 on Steam

    The full release on Steam.

Early
Access

Project Inertia · Steam · Price to be announced

Get involved

Bring your skills to the build

Project Inertia is headed to Steam Early Access, with the price announced closer to launch. Until then, if you have skills that could help shape the game, get in touch.

  • 3D modeling
  • Texturing
  • Animation
  • Music & sound
  • Playtesting
  • Modding
  • Spreading the word
Get in touch

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Natural Disasters, reimagined

Roblox projects

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The studio

One developer. A childhood dream.

Rem Studios is a one-person indie game studio based in Naperville, Illinois.

Every system starts as a complex problem and gets worked down to something clear and simple to play. I move between my own work and AI, which I use as a teacher and a sounding board, to learn faster and keep pushing the game further.

  1. RootsMinecraft modded files, up to a custom runtime model engine and editor on Forge
  2. 2025Two games started within a year
  3. Out nowAstral Odyssey on itch.io
  4. NowProject Inertia, pre-alpha trailer released
  5. Oct 23, 2026This website launched
  6. Oct 24, 2026New trailer cut, story, incarnations, worlds and community showcase added to the site

Contact

Follow along, play, or reach out

Bug reports and ideas are welcome. The most useful reports say what happened, where, and how to make it happen again.

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