Vholume — melancholic parkour game from a Straftat dev — launches August 21

Vholume, a first-person parkour game described by its own developers as a "melancholic first-person parkour adventure," launches on August 21. A new trailer dropped last month showing off its overgrown brutalist environments and confirming the release date.

The game is built by a three-person team, one of whom is part of the Lemaitre Bros. duo behind Straftat — the indie FPS that PC Gamer called the best FPS of 2024. Where Straftat goes loud and radical with its soundtrack, Vholume takes the opposite route: dejected atmospheric synths, lonely footsteps, effortful grunts. The aesthetic lands somewhere between Mirror's Edge and a liminal-space fever dream. Story-wise, the protagonist is scrounging ration tickets for his family in a dystopian world — classic parkour-game anti-authoritarian territory. Multiplayer is also in, letting you race friends in real time or chase their ghosts.

Mirror's Edge cast a long shadow over first-person parkour, and Vholume is one of several games in that mold currently in the pipeline. The brutalist jungle-gym level design and dystopian framing feel very much in step with the current cultural appetite for liminal aesthetics and decaying urban spaces — a vibe that's been everywhere from indie horror to art installations.

A demo is already live on Steam if you want to get a feel for the movement before the August 21 launch.