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Infinitesimals in action is every bit as beautiful and daunting as you would expect
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Brian Crecente
Roaming the planet at insect height gets you up close and personal with the sort of vegetation you are more likely to walk across than examine in everyday life. Here, you can admire how beautiful it is.
Light shimmers through massive blades of grass, dappling the soil-covered ground with dancing shadows. God rays cut through the low shadows cast by ferns, flowers, and other vegetation. At one point, I came across a towering ant, its mandibles chittering as it looked at me in what I assumed was slight surprise.
I could have blasted it, but why would I?
“Wildlife in the game is not your main threat,” said James McWilliams, Founder of Cubit Studios and Game Director for Infinitesimals. “Some of it is aggressive, some of it would be more curious. But the game isn’t about going around killing the wildlife.”
In Infinitesimals, you take on the role of Captain Awkney Relinrake as he traverses this seemingly giant world in search of his once-elite squadron, who have been scattered across the hostile playscape. His efforts are made more difficult by the towering terrain, local wildlife, and the Hunter Gatherers—mechanical sentinels that roam the planet.
McWilliams said that in designing the world, they decided to go with a representation of nature that feels authentic.
“It can’t be fully authentic because we have to take artistic liberties,” he said. “So it’s a stylized representation of being small.”
To create the look of the game in Unreal Engine 5, the team worked off many pictures taken at ground level. In my time with the third-person game, I quickly learned how to move through the terrain with the help of a jetpack that I used to get above the canopy of grass, burst in a different direction to avoid attacks, or simply move a bit faster.
A sensor mode activated by the press of the left bumper allows you to get visual representations of all of the emissions in the world, including electromagnetic, communications, and other sensors. Focusing in—an act similar to aiming a gun—allows you to isolate where you are scanning. In this case, it helps me locate where a distress beacon signal is coming from.
Like many of the games I saw at Summer Game Fest, Infinitesimals is a single-player game. McWilliams said that due to the team size, creating a multiplayer game was just out of the question. He added that because the story and the narrative were always this game’s main drive, it made the most sense for it to be single-player as well.
In the demo, I find my way to a station of sorts set up in the middle of the undergrowth and use a keypad to open a door. Once inside, a ceiling-mounted turret begins to attack me; with a little dodging and shooting, I manage to take it out. There are also little two-legged bulb-headed droids that I make short work of.
At one point, a companion hops onto my back and directs me to the next step of my mission. The game also offers players a chance to attempt to use stealth to slip past some enemies.
“You can’t fully avoid combat, but stealth is a tool in your belt and some players obviously are much more stealth-oriented,” McWilliams said.
The rolling combat through the tiny base is mixed with a light bit of puzzle-solving where I have to figure out how to get to locked-off areas. Captain Relinrake has both a health and an armor bar, but otherwise, the user interface is rather minimalistic. When he’s damaged, he can heal and also use an armor replenishment kit to patch himself up.
The demo concludes with a final battle outside, showcasing what it’s like to take on multiple enemies in a relatively open setting.
While there is no official release date yet, the team plans to release it in 2026. McWilliams said the idea for the game came from some long-held interests.
“I just always liked nature, and the idea of being small in nature was something I always wanted to do, and I like sci-fi,” he said. “So I just mixed the two.”
That passion for sci-fi absolutely informed the look of Captain Relinrake.
“Originally, when we were thinking about the designs, I wanted to go with something relatable,” McWilliams said. “So instead of compound eyes, for instance, we went with something that is quite human. If I were thinking from a realistic perspective, we would have had quite unrelatable designs. So instead, we went with stylized.
“His companions are more bug-like, in a way. They have these small little eyes that don’t even blink. But for Awkney, we wanted him to be quite humanoid.”
Look closely, though, and you’ll notice that under the armor, Captain Relinrake has his own sort of armored shell that includes facial appendages.
“That’s kind of an aspect of his species,” McWilliams said. “It grows and they carve it -- his shell -- for instance, when the shell grows out, they actually carve patterns into it as part of their culture. So he does have this biological armor as well, but that’s really part of his health. The armor is actually a suit he is wearing as a layer on top of his shell.”
While it has been more than two years since Cubit Studios revealed Infinitesimals, the Summer Game Fest show reveal was the first time the team shared the current build with anyone or showcased any in-depth videos. So the team was a bit trepidatious about what the reaction would be. Fortunately, people seemed to really enjoy what they saw in the theater.
“I heard someone shout out ‘Wow!’ at the end,” McWilliams said, laughing. “I was really hoping for that.”
You can wishlist Infinitesimals on Epic Games Store right now.