Infinitesimals Preview

IN A GALAXY NOT SO FAR, FAR AWAY

A long time ago in a garden shed far, far away, one man was still coming to terms with the abrupt closing of his previous studio and was now trying to figure out how to make his dream a reality. That dream was Infinitesimals, a larger than life, sci-fi epic drawing influence from classic immersive sims, iconic films, and even his grandfathers time serving in WW2 for the allies.

Iconic movies like Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Predator as well as watershed 90’s gaming classics like Deus Ex and Thief have been influential in the development of Infinitesimals. After playing Infinitesimals at Summer Game Fest Play Days these aren’t marketing ploys, but are part of the DNA that can easily be felt, seen and heard.

So let’s talk about Infinitesimals, what it is and why you should be excited, as well as a few reasons to have reservations.

EPIC PUBLISHING FOR AN EPIc ADVenture

Back in June, we were invited out to Los Angeles and given the privilege to attend Summer Game Fest Play Days. There were a lot of incredible games to play, but most were blue chip titles from known studios or sequels in existing successful franchises, which has become the standard across the media landscape. Making games, movies and TV is expensive and as a result, executives have become risk averse.

At Summer Game Fest Play Days, Epic Games was in attendance showing off a few of their games from their publishing arm that supports indie developers with Epic MegaGrants and in some cases full publishing. The three games they brought to the show couldn’t have been more diverse. There was End of Abyss from Section 9 Interactive, which is an isometric metroidvania from former Tarsier founders, Out of Words, which is a completely handcrafted, stop motion co-op adventure and Infinitesimals.

Before getting too far ahead, I got the chance to sit down and play Infinitesimals, but more importantly talk with James McWilliams, founder of Cubit Studios and I wanted to understand what it took to get to this point.

HOW INFINITESIMALS CAME TO BE

At the end of 2012, after starting up another company and working on a game called EON, the project received a publishing deal. Unfortunately, after a year, the rug was pulled out, the project was abruptly cancelled and the IP was gone. James was disillusioned. At the time, this was devastating, but in hindsight, this would be a very important lesson for James and play an integral role in the development of Infinitesimals.

After spending decades working in the industry on huge franchises like Crackdown and Operation Flashpoint as well as smaller titles like Snake Pass, James realized that if he wanted to make the game in his head, there would be only one way without compromise.

To generate income to pursue his dream, James began creating assets for the Unreal Engine Marketplace creating sound effects and particle effects that other developers could buy for use in their game. This was in addition to the money that he was generating working full time working on some of the games we just mentioned. The money that this brought in allowed James to pay himself a measly salary of minimum wage for the first three years of development and work on Infinitesimals in parallel to creating assets for Unreal Marketplace.

After 3 years, James was finally able to hire the first person to help with programming Infinitesimals in 2016. It was at this moment in time when James realized that the project became very real and development on Infinitesimals outgrew his initial scope. James went to his backyard, cleaned out some junk, created space in his garden shed and started the first office of Cubit Studios.

In 2018, James was able to secure a small grant from the UK Government, which allowed him to create a demo to bring to BitSummit in Early 2019. Later that year, Cubit Studios secured an Epic MegaGrant, which is a program that is focused on supporting smaller teams who are using Unreal Engine to push the boundaries of real time 3D technology with funding anywhere from 5k to 500k USD. After securing an Epic MegaGrant, Cubit Studios only expanded to four people and even after signing a publishing deal with Epic, the team only grew to eight with James still operating out of his garden shed to this day.

This shows commitment to substance over style. James isn’t concerned with the vanity of having a polished concrete and glass office space, he is more concerned with taking the money and using it wisely to facilitate turning his dream into reality. Infinitesimals is paramount to everything and through his actions and words it’s evident how personal Infinitesimals is to James.

Earlier we mentioned how the abrupt closure of his previous studio would pay dividends for Infinitesimals and that’s because James has been approached with publishing offers around a half a dozen times before securing the Epic MegaGrant. Offers began rolling in around 2014 up until 2019 when a much larger company also made an offer. All of the publishing deals wanted full control of the IP, which is something that James wasn’t willing to part with after learning the hard way in 2012. It’s a very possible scenario that if James took any of those deals, Infinitesimals wouldn’t exist anymore.

Honey, I shrunk the elite alien Squadron!

“You can’t ignore the influence of Star Wars” James tells me. Within minutes you can hear that influence as the score sounds reminiscent of a John Williams from Episode IV. You are instantly transported to another universe. You play as Captain Awkney Relinrake, the leader of an elite alien squadron. After a catastrophic crash, Captain Awkney and the rest of the squadron have become stranded on an alien planet, which happens to be Earth. Making matters worse, the entire squadron has become separated and you now need to find the missing members.

Captain Awkney is smaller than your average protagonist as he is no bigger than a grasshopper and must navigate his way through a world filled with treacherous terrain, local wildlife and deadly machines. What’s immediately interesting is that Infinitesimals is set on Earth, but it’s very unclear what time period. In addition to the trying to piece back together the mystery of Planet Earth, you are trying to find the rest of your squadron and uncover the mystery of the colony that you were supposed to join that has vanished as mechanical sentinels known as the Hunter Gatherers appear to have completely taken over. Your only chance is to reunite with your squad, rebuild and rise up against the hunter gatherers.

When I first got my hands on Infinitesimals at Summer Game Fest, it felt visceral. The movement was fast and frenetic, but also fluid and when it came time to shoot my first bullet with an SMG, it felt violently uncontrollable. There was a lot of recoil and I couldn’t just hold down the trigger. I had to intentionally aim and understand how to wield it properly. Combat also embraced a physics system that felt reminiscent of Dead Space as enemies reacted based on dismemberment. Instead of shooting limbs off Necromorphs, you blast mechanical legs from sentinel robots.

James tells me that the goal was for every gun to have a “realistic ballistic simulation. The challenge comes from knowing each gun, the spread it has and getting good at it. A large factor includes also picking the right tool for the job”. There will be numerous guns in the game as well as tools to help mitigate recoil problems I was told, which sounded like weapon attachments, especially if the intention for combat was to capture a “mil-sim” feel.

As for the immersive sim aspects of Infinitesimals. Almost every aspect of the game can be approached in a variety of ways. If you use sensor mode, you can catch a radio tower and hear some enemy communications and then react accordingly. Another area in the demo was to approach a large enemy building and scan to see the electronic schematics of the building. There was a keypad, where my companion suggested 1-2-3-4, which worked and showed a light hearted side of Infinitesimals. However, I also had the ability to open a sensor and trace an electronic signal, which would probably allow me to disable a security system with the right upgrades. I would be willing to wager than if I went to the roof of the building, there would have been an alternate way in up there as well.

Once inside I opted for a stealth approach because if a game offers stealth, that is the approach that I try to do first and I asked James if it was possible to complete the game in full stealth without getting involved in any combat and he said “From a story perspective, there are certain moments that need to be crafted in such a way to create the overarching narrative, especially with the size of Cubit Studios. There will be times that you cant avoid smashing things up”

What lies at the forefront of your journey is player choice. Just like Deus Ex and Thief, there are numerous ways to approach every scenario and create your hero in the way that you want. “what defines your character is how you play and the gear you equip” James tells me.

Finally, it’s important to note that Infinitesimals isn’t an open world game, but like Deus Ex and Thief, games that heavily influenced development, there are huge curated sandboxes that James referred to as “large hubs”. In these areas you are free to explore and investigate what sparks your interest. Cubit wants to encourage and reward player curiosity.

CONCERNS

The big caveat with Infinitesimals is that as good as it sounds, we have only played about 30 minutes of the experience. Cubit Studios is a very small team and Infinitesimals is their debut title. Obviously, the 30 minutes we played felt amazing and the fact that Epic Games not only awarded them a MegaGrant, but also after that decided that Infinitesimals was worth publishing upon closer look bodes very well for the final product.

Speaking of Epic, Infinitesimals is launching as an Epic Games PC exclusive alongside PS5 and Xbox Series at launch. The hope is that the lack of Steam wishlisitng and awareness doesn’t hurt Infinitesimals when it releases in 2026.

A NEW HOPE

Infinitesimals is more than just inspired by Episode IV - A New Hope as Infininitesimals is new hope for Cubit studios, but also for fans of immersive sims. The hope is that Infinitesimals finds success because James indicated that this is just a small slice of the much bigger narrative they hope to explore.

I'll leave you with this, at the end of my time with Infinitesimals, I asked James what he wished people knew about the game and he said “When Infinitesimals first started in 2013, there was nothing else like it. Infinitesimals is a story driven adventure with visceral combat and sci-fi simulation elements”

Infinitesimal means extremely small and even though Cubit Studios is only 8 people, the ambitions for Infinitesimals are substantially larger. At a quick glance, it might share a resemblance with another title on the market that uses a small in nature premise, however Infintesimals is infinitely different.