There are games that ask you to save humanity, and then there is FLESHBAG, which appears far more interested in what happens when humanity is introduced to your latest terrible engineering idea. Developer Industrial Technology and Witchcraft and publisher Bonus Stage Publishing have announced the PC physics sandbox, with a public playtest sign-up available on Steam.
Built around a reactive voxel world, FLESHBAG lets players construct machines and experiment with how objects and human test subjects respond. Motors, moving parts and an assortment of tools are there to encourage increasingly elaborate contraptions. The attraction is the interaction between the things you build and a world that can be pushed, broken and otherwise made to regret your arrival.
It is also firmly pitched towards adults who enjoy dark comedy and exaggerated violence. This is the sort of sandbox where the game’s name is doing a fair amount of advance warning, so anyone looking for a gentle building game should take a proper look at the store’s content information before jumping in.
That said, causing chaos is not presented as the only option. The developer also points to more peaceful building possibilities, including making yourself a cabin. It is a pleasingly odd contrast: you can spend your time developing some ludicrous mechanical nightmare or decide that, actually, a little house would be lovely. Sometimes the most surprising use of unrestricted freedom is behaving yourself.
The planned route includes a playtest, a demo and an Early Access release. Steam currently lists 2027 for the game, but there is no precise launch date to circle in the diary yet. Signing up for a public test also does not mean it has started immediately.
For the official details and content warnings, FLESHBAG’s Steam page is live. We will wait to see whether the community builds beautiful homes, astonishing machines or a deeply worrying mixture of the two.