Thinky Direct 2025: Cryptic glyphs and xenobiology collide in upcoming metroidbrainia EMUUROM

Devin Stone, 6 June 2025

EMUUROM is part of Thinky Direct 2025! If you missed it, Thinky Direct was our very first games showcase that gave a spotlight to a bunch of highly anticipated thinky games you'll love to solve. There were big announcements, exclusive trailers, brand new demos, and more! If you want to view the showcase, right here on the website, on YouTube, and on Twitch.

If you read my article on conlangs, you know my dark secret: I have a thing for fictional languages—so much so that when I spotted these cryptic glyphs in the trailer for EMUUROM, I bolted upright in my seat. The question at the time was, are those glyphs mere set dressing, marketing fodder to attract thinky-minded gamers? Or do they hold crucial meaning, the kind the game will require me to decipher in order to uncover its secrets?

Now, with the demo freshly installed on my computer, it’s time to find out.

After a brief but epic cinematic intro (the music is a banger!), EMUUROM plops you smack dab in front of a tablet with inscrutable alien text. This front-loading can only be a good sign, right? I think. They wouldn’t put this so early if it weren’t critical to the game. After tamping down my enthusiasm, I take the plunge. Objective one: recover the scanning device I lost in the intro. This scanner-less section serves to tutorialize the game’s platforming mechanics.

Mechanics which, to be honest, feel a bit off. Laggy. Perhaps it’s the lack of a drag coefficient on the air movement? When you let go of a direction midair, you continue travelling at the current speed, instead of gradually decelerating. Because of this, scenarios that would be trivial in other games can actually be frustrating here. Skill issue? You be the judge.

Fortunately, the charming aesthetics keep my morale up. The environments are lush without being overwhelming, and the music strikes just the right balance between chill and urgent. The sound effects too add a pleasant buoyancy to proceedings. I’m overcome with the same sense of eager wonder that I was at the start of Animal Well. And yes, there are creatures here, too. By the time I’ve worm-bounced and bird-surfed my way to my missing scanner, the controls are starting to feel good.

I pick up the scanner, learn how to use it, and…another tablet faces me down. Much like the first, this tablet has cryptic alien text on it. When I point the scanner at it, it translates that text. Uh oh. Was there no decipherment mechanic after all? Just a momentary obfuscation until I recovered the scanner, at which point it all gets magically transmuted to English? I maintain hope. Surely there has to be more to it than that, right?

At the very least, there’s more to the scanner. Besides tablets, all the flora and fauna are scannable, each revealing something about their behaviour. At first, this info feels redundant, with knowledge offered being things that I had already deduced. Later, however, puzzles appear where lore learned from scanning proves invaluable. The question is, I suppose, whether this is interesting. If a puzzle requires a textual hint earned by scanning, then is the puzzle too obtuse to begin with? And why couldn’t the game deliver that hint through a more elegant mechanism? Food for thought.

What’s unquestionably interesting is the scanner’s other purpose. Besides dispensing lore, scanning a lifeform often provokes a behavioral response. Certain creatures, for example, freeze in place under the effects of the scanner’s beam, while others become agitated and take flight. My mind swims with the possibilities.

Here again, though, my issues with the controls return. Scanning is inherently awkward. On activation, the beam has a strange habit of starting from a down position and swivelling up to whatever direction you’re pressing, as opposed to aiming that direction from the start. Plus, maybe it’s user error, but I keep toggling the scanner off when I want it on and vice versa. My brain insists that holding the button is required, and when it turns out not to be, I get turned around in my head. There’s also the fact that toggling the scanner freezes the player character in place midair, yet creatures continue to move. I can’t explain why this bothers me, but it does.

These qualms all fade when I crest a hill, scan a new tablet, and am struck with a wall of untranslated alien text. All the scanner translates is a single line at the end: “A stranger comes. Chaos ensues.” Even better, similarities in structure between the alienese and English versions suggest it’s an actual, honest translation. There’s meaning behind those cryptic scribblings after all! Heck yeah.

The soundtrack chooses that moment to kick up a notch, eager and ominous, mirroring my own feelings. After a quick 'boss fight', which I won’t spoil, the demo wraps, and I’m left conflicted and uncertain. There’s depth here. But how much? Then I see the “Language consulting” section in the credits, and my eyes go wide. I Google the names below and...No, wait, this must just refer to assistance translating the game from its native Finnish to English, right? Language consulting, not Linguistics consulting.

I facepalm. I’m dreaming. Chasing rabbits. Unless..