Build a base to escape an alien world, all while browsing the internet, in this quarter-screen idler

pcgamer.com:

Clickers, idlers, and the like exist for a reason: That reason is many of us want to do two things at a time. We want to stimulate more than one bit of our brain. I'm sure that by now you know at least one person, or are that person, who combines in some way watching shows, listening to podcasts, reading social media, and videogames at once.

This is an urge as old as the first person who was like «we should put a radio in this car.»

Enter The Evergloom Team, who're now showing off their second game: Deskape, stylized dEskape, is purpose-built to fit along a band at the bottom of your screen. Crashed on an alien world, your job is to build up infrastructure so you can escape while defending yourself from attacks by an alien hive. It's explicitly designed as a base-building game «allowing you to work, browse, or watch something else while you play. It's idle when you like and active when you want,» according to the developers.

Deskape will have a circular world for you to explore, in the form of a linear screen that eventually wraps around. You can play passively or jump in as your character at any time, and you can pop out resizable windows to arrange them around whatever your primary desktop task is. The game will run in two modes: A higher-power-consumption active mode for when you're paying close attention, and a low-power idler mode for when you're doing something else.

The Evergloom Team's previous game, Desktopia, turned PC Gamer writer Joshua Wolens into a very bad landlord. «Sure, I've killed hundreds of citizens through neglect, but I also made a whole lot of money,» he said while spending a bit of time with it last year. It'll be interesting to see what improvements and lessons the developers have learned since