Rusty Lake's brilliantly sinister puzzling goes co-op in first The Past Within gameplay trailer

Developer Rusty Lake has shared a first – and, it has to be said, slightly unnerving – look at its brand-new co-operative time-travel puzzler The Past Within, the latest entry in its superb Rusty Lake and Cube Escape series.

If you’ve yet to experience Rusty Lake’s deliciously surreal output – a collection of, so far, 15 games, all serving up a darkly atmospheric slice of casual point-and-click puzzling with a room escape slant – they’re well worth checking out.

Six of its titles are fully fledged premium offerings (Rusty Lake Hotel, Roots, Paradise, Paradox, The White Door, and series precursor Samsara Room), while the remainder are smaller companion pieces, falling under the Cube Escape banner. Perhaps most appealingly, all form one giant interconnected narrative that’s a puzzle in itself to piece together, full of strange beings from other planes, secret pacts, dark family histories, ritualistic murder, and more.

And if your interest is piqued, and you’re looking for a good place to start, I can heartily recommend Rusty Lake: Roots – a gorgeous, surprisingly affecting piece of work, and a wonderful example of developer Rusty Lake’s increasingly ambitious reach.

All of which brings us back to The Past Within, which was originally announced at the start of this year. Previously, we were told it would take the familiar Rusty Lake formula and introduce a co-operative multiplayer element, in which two players work together across different timelines to solve the mysteries surrounding recurring series character Albert Vanderboom. “Communicate what you see around you to help one another solve various puzzles,” explained the developer at the time, “and explore the worlds from different perspectives”.