Previously announced for Xbox and PC release (and originally scheduled to launch last year), developer Modern Storyteller's The Forgotten City is now lined up to launch on Switch and other consoles in Summer 2021.

A Roman murder mystery described as a 'mature narrative-driven game' by publisher Dear Villagers, the game began life as a Skyrim mod — a rather popular one, in fact, that's been downloaded a cool three million times according to the PR blurb — and has since been fleshed out into its own thing in Unreal Engine. Check out the trailer above to get a flavour for it.

The game presents an open-world underground city from the Roman era, and you play as a time-traveller following the lives of twenty-three people living according to a mysterious 'Golden Rule'; if anyone breaks this rule — no treading on pavement cracks? no passing wind on the hour? — everyone in the city dies by being turned to gold.

It's apparently up to you to then loop back, investigate the shady goings-on causing everyone to die a shiny death and, presumably, help everyone break the loop. Here's a cryptic line from the PR blurb followed by some screenshots:

‘The many shall suffer the sins of the one’: this is the rule of the forgotten city, a two-thousand-year-old Utopia frozen in time. If one person ‘sins’, everybody dies, again and again, and again. Players must find a way to break the cycle or else suffer an eternity of madness.

The game is scheduled to launch on Summer 2021. No word on a price or a physical release just yet, but we'll keep a goldeneye out for more details.

Let us know below if this trailer has piqued your interest, or if you've played the mod already.