Celestial Return

We believe that each game is a "metaphor". Metaphors are powerful tools that carry deep meanings told in the language of stories.

Factsheet

Title
Celestial Return
Developer
Metaphor Games
Publisher
Shoreline Games
Players
1
Genres
RPG, Story Rich, Dice, Cyberpunk, Narrative, Sci-fi
Game Type
Narrative RPG
Platforms
PC
Full release date:
Summer 2026
Wishlist on Steam

About the developer

Metaphor Games
From successful, award-winning TTRPGs to narrative video games
Metaphor Games is the digital gaming partner of Metis Creative. While Metis continues its work in the TTRPG space, Metaphor Games is a dedicated studio for channeling that same expertise in narrative and world-building to digital experiences. Metaphor Games sees games as a unified art form, where visuals, writing, and music fuse into one living whole. This philosophy is at the heart of Celestial Return, their first digital title and a true passion project.
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A dying city. A string of suicides. A detective with nothing left to lose.

Netherveil City eats the weak. Its streets bleed neon, its corpses crawl back to life, and its secrets? They’ll gnaw through your sanity.  Step into the worn boots of Detective Howard. Armed with a rusted badge, a sentient rose that won’t shut up, and a pocketful of stolen dice.

Explore the city. Interrogate the dead. Expose the c*rpos.
Investigate. Make choices. Loot the dice. Roll the dice.
And survive. (Optional.)

Luck isn’t a Luxury, It’s Currency

Dice aren’t just tools. They’re oxygen. Earn ’em, spend ’em, lose ’em. Hoard too long, and opportunities vanish. Roll recklessly, and resources burn.

There’s no perfect build. No power fantasies. Just survival… barely.

Your Mind is the Battlefield

Your choices build character. Your character builds choices.

Intelligence picks locks in silence. Virtue pleads for mercy. Foolishness laughs at the abyss.
These fragments clash, corrupt, and rewrite your path mid-conversation. Choose your poison and deal with the consequences.

Visuals to be Resurrected For

A hand-shattered art style. Where manga’s precision meets the raw nerve of American comics. Ripping pages from legends like Blame!, Biomega, Akira, and Berserk. Our artistry aims to evoke the same depth and intensity that made these series iconic.

A Manifesto for the Expendable

This isn’t a story about heroes. It’s a manifesto for the forgotten, the erased, the expendable, those never given a chance. It’s about those who were never meant to survive, yet somehow still do. It’s about the existential terror of being alive in a world ruled by forces you can’t see. It’s about resistance.

“I’m here, and I won’t go quietly.”

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