The PlayStation 1 is the perfect example of hardware limitations directing the style of games. Unsettling wobbly polygons, low resolution, and fog or darkness obscuring your view - rich grounds for horror, and despite being based on a rather wonky film, Alien Resurrection (famous for defining twin analogue FPS controls) was one of the moodiest action games of its time. I'd like to think that Visuwyg, developer of Derelikt, agrees, as the just-released demo feels like returning to those uncanny space station corridors again, unsure of whether I'm the hunted or the hunter.

In the far future, mankind has found a bizarre anomaly: A spiral-shaped asteroid locked in orbit above Saturn. A research station has been built there to study it and the many strange engravings found on its surface. You're a contractor, just arrived and hired to look for a research team that has recently gone missing on the asteroid's surface. Of course, moments after your mission begins, all hell breaks loose, and from there things rapidly descend into cosmic horror territory.

Horrible spidery creatures burst out of ventilation shafts, worm-monsters burrow out of floors, and ammo - while not reaching survival horror levels of resource starvation - is hardly plentiful, often forcing you to go into your grid-based inventory to consolidate partial mags. Weirdly satisfying, and strategically smart, lest you end up loading your assault rifle in the middle of a panicky fight with one that only has three bullets rattling around.

There's some light immersive sim elements here - keypad puzzles (with the trailer sneakily showing 0451 opens up at least one door), vents to crawl through and aforementioned inventory management - but this feels far more like an action game than the likes of System Shock or the recent Retro Space. It is also very compelling so far, feeling just modernized enough to be a slick, immediately accessible experience, but low-fi and gritty enough to feel like it might be a long-lost PS1 game, albeit running at a better frame rate.

You can thankfully dial in just HOW long-lost you want it to be. If you're a real sicko, you can have it at authentic PS1 resolution, at a 4:3 aspect ratio and with all the wobbly vertices and warped textures you'd associate with the old console. Personally, not my jam though (I love emulators that smooth out those rough edges - I suffered enough back in the day), so I'm glad it provides the option to scale it up to something a little closer to modern spec, including native ultrawide support. That said, even with the most modern graphics it offers, it's still comparatively low-resolution, and you're not going to be seeing very far without a flashlight. All the better to hide all those scuttling little space monsters.

It's a good time, and I reckon you should give it a try for yourself. The full version of Derelikt is out later this year, with the demo out now on Steam. Check those corners.