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Take a deep breath with nine minutes of Adrift gameplay

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Owen S. Good is a longtime veteran of video games writing, well known for his coverage of sports and racing games.

Adam Orth and Three One Zero have posted a new nine minutes of gameplay from his upcoming virtual reality/exploration title Adrift and it gives a little more concrete sense of what's going on in the game than has been seen in shorter looks before.

The demo parcels out the game's backstory and main goal — namely that the player is on a space station that's suffered a catastrophic accident and it's up to him or her to restore its three modules without running out of oxygen. Progressing from one undamaged-yet-airless chamber to space, you can see the destroyed portions of the station and the space flotsam surrounding it. There are helpful audiologs to fill in the back stories of the crew and comrades caught up in the tragedy.

Notably, there's no soundtrack — unless you count the breathing, which quickens as oxygen runs out. There always seems to be a bottle drifting nearby — or at least within sight, provided one can aim at it and get there quick enough with time running out (which, spoiler alert, doesn't happen at the end).

Adrift began as a a journey allegorical to Orth's experiences after being fired in 2013 by Microsoft over a tweet he'd made about the Xbox One. It's since evolved into something he considers a "first-person experience." Originally slated for a September launch, it has now been pushed to a 2016 debut so that it arrives at the same time for Oculus Rift as well as PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. For more, see our in-depth preview.

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