Explore 'em ups and walking simulators are jolly popular nowadays. Not since the Victorian days of absinthe and healthy strolling has it been so popular to ramble about, enjoying a monologue inside your head. Lucky dogs that we are, we're getting a decaying city to stroll about in The Old City, with the first trailer showing we'll enjoy sights from rust to a rotting whale.

The Old City waxes philosophical in a long-abandoned city, sending you out from your home in the sewers to explore and uncover its mysteries. As well as using good old environmental storytelling, it'll have your character muttering to himself about what he sees. It's said to start off quite linear, but then branch out into paths, requiring several playthroughs to see everything--perhaps think more The Stanley Parable than Gone Home.

"We plan to minimize interactive complexity (gameplay) and maximize aesthetics to prove this point: any part of what makes a game a game can be the focus, as long as that element is of substantial quality, and as long as the other elements that support it are not nonexistent, but rather are just what they need to be to help the highlighted element stand out further," developer PostMod Softworks explained on its official website (via Indie Statik).

Moody music comes from dark ambient solist Atrium Carceri, who you may remember from the Half-Life horror mod Paranoia.

The Old City is coming to PC. Here's the pleasing trailer: