There are places in the twisted windings of the world where what we take for reality breaks down and allows a malicious madness from beyond our comprehension to seep through the cracks. Euclidean rips us through one such warped fissure into a realm of impossible creatures and huge, gloating malevolence. Whatever intellect built and encompasses the crumbling structures of that beyond-ancient place never meant for humans to trespass. Those who find themselves in that drowning, suffocating space soon find themselves obliterated to less than dust. However, this time is different. We are to descend into the depths of Euclidean.

Developer Alpha Wave describes their first project as an adventure of “geometric horror” which is an apt description for a game that brings writhing geometric patterns to life with a strange wickedness. A deep, cruel voice soon informs you that everything here will kill you as you begin sinking into the darkness that awaits. In the blackness below, it waits and mocks, taking a subtle pleasure in degrading what it believes to be your final moments.  

Euclidean plays a bit like a slow-paced endless runner, but with sinking through an ocean of monsters instead of running from imminent danger. You use the WASD to avoid obstacles and beasts and have the ability to become insubstantial for a couple seconds in order to pass through the creatures that wish you ill. Touching anything beside the strange glowing orbs on the floor of every level results in death. It never evolves past those concepts and feels more contemplative and puzzle-like than a more action-packed endless runner. This design choice really allows the atmosphere and creepiness to seep into the action.

For its benefits, the slow pace cuts both ways for Euclidean. The leisurely sinking speed leads to controls that feel sluggish as moving out of the way of mad horrors and floating ruins seems just as unhurried. That can be pretty frustrating when an instant death means you restart the stage over from the beginning, which can mean another several minutes slowly floating down through the detritus of madness. A visually dark aesthetic, while effectively reinforcing the title’s murky themes, compounds the irritation by obscuring obstacles. Just seeing enemies becomes a struggle. Your gaze in this first-person game naturally gravitates down, the only direction in which you move, making it hard to see the geometric monstrosities coming from the sides or above.