Possessor(s)

A demon, a college student, and a flooded city

Possessor(s) is Heart Machine's metroidvania, published by Devolver Digital and released 11 November 2025 for Windows, the studio's first release since Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash. Players control Luca, a college student living through an interdimensional catastrophe that floods and quarantines her city and costs her her legs, saved only by striking a desperate pact with a demon named Rhem, who grants her new legs and abilities in exchange for sharing her body. Together, the reluctant, often combative pair explore the ruined, interconnected sprawl of a collapsed megacity, from fallen skyscrapers to an abandoned aquarium, fighting through enemies with combat explicitly inspired by platform fighters while gradually learning to coexist, a central relationship the game's own marketing and much of its review corpus treat as the real heart of the experience.

Art, music and writing reviewers agree on almost without exception

The single most consistent thread running through Possessor(s)' large review corpus, positive and negative alike, is agreement on the strength of its presentation. Reviewers repeatedly and specifically praise the game's art direction, describing a unique, expressive visual style and richly designed characters and enemies as the clearest, least disputed strength in the entire corpus, with even reviewers who ultimately recommend against the game routinely singling out the artwork for genuine, unqualified praise. The soundtrack earns its own consistent, specific credit, with multiple detailed reviews calling it among the best music the studio has produced since Hyper Light Drifter. Writing draws particularly strong, repeated praise for its central relationship: reviewers describe Luca and Rhem as convincingly depicting a toxic, codependent bond neither character fully chose, with one detailed review specifically crediting the game for showing how both characters "bond over it even as they fight," while another compares the overall experience to "a downer song that means a lot to you personally," a melancholic tone several reviewers say they found genuinely affecting even when other elements of the game left them cold.

Combat and traversal draw the corpus's sharpest, most repeated criticism

Set against that near-unanimous presentation praise, a heavily repeated and genuinely divided complaint concerns Possessor(s)' mechanical foundation. Multiple detailed reviews describe combat as unsatisfying, with reviewers citing awkward enemy attack animations that lack clear start-up cues, making encounters feel more like guesswork than readable exchanges, and arguing the game's platform-fighter-inspired systems, juggling enemies with combo strings, never develop the depth the comparison implies. A specific, independently repeated complaint targets traversal directly, singling out the game's signature whip-swing tool as clumsy and sluggish, with one detailed review asking bluntly "how could they make that feel so sluggish," and further criticizing a design choice requiring a separate interact button to climb surfaces rather than the more standard directional climbing command genre veterans expect. That combination leads a meaningful portion of the review base to draw a sharp line between the game's presentation and its fundamentals, with one widely-read negative review recommending prospective buyers looking primarily for satisfying gameplay look instead toward genre peers like Silksong or Constance.

Bugs, unfinished edges, and a studio's difficult year

A further, specific and repeated complaint describes Possessor(s) launching in a technically rough, occasionally broken state. Reviewers cite progress-blocking bugs including becoming stuck inside walls, enemies clipping into environmental objects, and, in one widely-read account, a boss floating away into a ceiling and becoming trapped inside a damaging fire hazard mid-encounter. Some reviewers specifically credit the developers for prompt post-launch patches addressing named, previously reported issues, while continuing to recommend against the game overall on other grounds. Much of that critical discussion sits against a specific, well-documented backdrop: Heart Machine underwent repeated rounds of layoffs in the weeks immediately preceding launch, following the earlier cancellation of Hyper Light Breaker's continued development, news multiple reviewers cite directly as shaping both their expectations for the finished game and, in several cases, their decision to buy it on release day specifically to support the remaining team. That context recurs often enough across the corpus, both from reviewers moved to greater patience and from reviewers who argue the studio "is just not delivering" regardless of the circumstances behind it, that it functions as a genuine backdrop to how Possessor(s)' technical and mechanical shortcomings are being read by its audience.

A studio's third act, read through its fans' own history with it

Possessor(s) arrives as Heart Machine's fourth major release, following the widely acclaimed Hyper Light Drifter, the more divisive Solar Ash, and the discontinued Early Access title Hyper Light Breaker, and a meaningful share of the review corpus reads the new game explicitly through that lineage rather than in isolation. Reviewers who loved Hyper Light Drifter specifically describe searching Possessor(s) for the same "deceptively sincere, emotionally resonant" quality that made the earlier game special, and the corpus splits fairly evenly on whether they find it: several detailed reviews describe Possessor(s) as the closest the studio has come to recapturing that feeling since Drifter itself, while others argue the studio's more recent output, Breaker's cancelled Early Access run in particular, suggests deeper structural problems the new game hasn't managed to shake off. That framing gives even sharply negative reviews an unusually personal, invested tone throughout the corpus, with reviewers less interested in dismissing the game outright than in working through disappointment from people who specifically wanted Heart Machine to succeed, a dynamic that shapes how much benefit of the doubt individual reviewers extend to the game's rougher mechanical edges.

Value

At NZ$15.99, Possessor(s) sits at a modest price for a metroidvania from a studio with Heart Machine's pedigree, and much of its review base considers the trade fair given the strength of its art, music and writing even where its combat and technical execution draw real, repeated criticism. The Mostly Positive score, 598 positive against 192 negative across 790 reviews, reflects a review base broadly won over by presentation and story, set against a genuinely divided, heavily repeated complaint that the game's combat, traversal and launch-state polish fall short of what the genre, and the studio's own earlier work, has led players to expect. For fans of Heart Machine's earlier games drawn specifically to atmosphere and narrative, Possessor(s) is worth playing; for players prioritizing mechanically satisfying combat above all else, the corpus's sharpest critics suggest tempering expectations first.