
Congratulations, contractor! You've been approved to trial our cutting-edge AI visor. Use it to explore the Neuras lab and recover the staff's research. Your visor is safe, reliable, and up to 99% accurate. Just don't ask why the "ketchup" in the corner makes such a horrible crunching sound.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Media

About
the optimist says it’s half human
the pessimist says it’s half monster
and the project manager says, “when can we ship it?”
PROXIMATE is a dread-driven narrative game where you investigate a deep sea laboratory and piece together the events that lead to the research team’s demise.
You'll be required to wear an image recognition visor that only tells you the bare minimum information you need to succeed — and sometimes less. Use text information, proximity data and audio clues to form a mental map of your surroundings and pray that your technology won't fail you when you need it most.
There is no monster.
Assignment timeboxed to 90 minutes. If you’re here longer than that, we might have to dock your pay.
Your visor says that the red stain on the wall is ketchup. It was coded by some very smart people, so you should definitely trust it.
Collect chat logs from the research team, but don't read into them too much. We're not paying you to figure out some kind of sinister mystery here.
I mean, we haven’t seen the monster. So it’s probably not there.
Receive helpful calls from your manager, voiced by Luke Austin, who's here to make your job easier. Probably.
Connect with a cast of queer characters, who we definitely cared about and will miss dearly. Oh hey, have you signed that waiver yet?
If you hear it, turn away.
After labor rights movements sweep large parts of India and Southeast Asia, companies around the world lose their supply of cheap exploitable workers. Melbourne-based tech startup Neuras decides to attempt the impossible: installing AI drives into the freshly dead to create a cheap and endless supply of workers.
After a year of disappointing results, the Neuras lab suddenly cuts all contact with their investors. You, a contractor for the country's largest investment firm, have been tasked with investigating the lab and recovering the firm's rightful IP. But it's the firm's other investment project -- the SONA visor -- that might end up being your bigger problem.
That, and the breathing you keep hearing behind the door.
Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English**languages with full audio support
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 47 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 47 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
Small but very unique! I guess I loved the idea of the game little more than the actual experience, but it didn't overstay its welcome and I love to give stuff like this a try!
Wonderful tight horror game! The narrative was excellently delivered and the game is very good at building tension. The sound design was absolutely on point and, if you can, play this game with headphones! The way this game forces you to "see" what's around you is very fun and inspired, and it is truly the hook of the game. It allows the experience to be very uncanny and tense without having jump scares. Worth the experience!
Neat game that revolves around an intriguing gameplay mechanic in addition to also containing an interesting storyline that is conveyed through scattered bits of lore. In terms of horror, I found the game to be more in-line with being atmospherically horrifying [spoiler] due to the monster more-or-less being omnipresent for the majority of the game (not a bad thing) in that you only really have 2 (technically 3) encounters with it [/spoiler] causing for my perception of the world during gameplay to be that of a fear of the unknown [spoiler] (i.e. any minute sound I may have heard that [b] could [/b] be the monster) [/spoiler] that is coupled together with the information that the AI visor is rendering back to me. As such, I will add that the game is more-so a narratively driven horror experience rather than a typical horror game that revolves around frequent action or cat and mouse situations, but this didn't detract from the gameplay that I experienced. Overall, its a good game that carry's with it an interesting narrative and gameplay experience.
I never write reviews but for this game I would like to leave a comment. I discovered this game thanks to a PowerPack Youtube video. As soon as the AI visor concept was presented I stopped the video and knew I had to play the game myself. The concept is so interesting: it's a first person game but you don't see the world, you read words describing what's in front of you with relative accuracy. Ex: Airlock 95%. You can already imagine the fun variations of this concept. That was the hook, and I was quite surprised to see that the game had much more to offer on top of that. The characters are interesting and I loved taking notes about them and discovering their relationships. The story was packed with sci-fi and horror ideas and concepts merged together. You can also tell the developer made a very personal game and I thank him for sharing it. The game is short (2h max and that's because I took notes) and at first the movement is annoying (I kept bumping into things and missing doors all the time), but it is really worth your time. I wanted a fresh horror experience, I got one of the nicest little game I ever played.
Great game, only issue with it is that the certainty percent just felt useless. I honestly never felt the need to use it, and past the first 30 minutes of game-play, I just didn't use it. Also, I appreciate the choice the use the monster sparingly (I prefer it over the alternative), but it could've felt more like a threat. The times it does show up, I felt no tension because I knew as long as a didn't do a certain thing, I wouldn't die. A more interesting mechanic would be to have the monster kill you if you're not looking at it, so that you have to balance keeping the monster at bay, and seeing where you need to go next. If this mechanic was used, I think the number of encounters would be just right. Overall, totally worth my money, a great time.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this game was gut wrenching. Really good story with good humor and twists and themes and such.
Ein absolutes Indie Master piece, flüssiges gameplay keine Bugs, das feeling nichts zu sehen und deswegen aufs gehör zu vertrauen phänomenal. Die Sounds in dem Game sind zum Kotzen schön gemacht. Die "KI Brille" wenn man sie so nennen kann ist eine sehr geile Idee und wurde super umgesetzt. Von der Lore erfährt man nicht wirklich viel und lässt einen breitgefächerten überlegungsfreiraum, jedoch auch nicht zu wenig dass man komplett im dunkeln tappt. Im großen und ganzen ein schönes Horror Game und für das wenig Geld sollte es jeder Horrorliebhaber mal gezockt haben.
Queer eldritch horror short story :)
fantastic game, reeeeally fun experience 9/10
awesomeee art direction, writing, sound design, and was scary for the first half!!
Related
Related
Trends
Modeled estimate over time, reconstructed from Steam's monthly review histogram.
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
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