“Do you think love can bloom, even on a battlefield?” It’s one of many questions the Metal Gear series ask players to consider across its many cutscenes and Codec calls. As a player, you’ve most often seen those conversations play out from the perspective of Big Boss or one of his many clones, but a new game from indie studio 14 Hours Productions asks what if you were instead the person behind the screen in those interactions. Announced today during the Story-Rich Showcase, Burn-9 is described as a “reverse Metal Gear.”

As a radio operator, it’s your job to guide a secret agent, who goes by the handle Dodo, as they try to salvage a mission that has gone horribly wrong. Your interactions with the agent and others play out over a series of radio conversations. Each time, you’ll have the chance to respond to situations in a few different ways, deciding how best to guide your agent and the amount of information you want to reveal to them and your superiors.

14 Hours Productions

“Caught between the military’s command and your field agent, the orders you’re given may conflict with your own morals and interests,” says publisher Fellow Traveller. Judging from that description, Burn-9 sounds like it’s trying to accomplish what Lucas Pope did with his breakaway hit, Papers, Please, which forced players to make impactful moral decisions through the most mundane gameplay possible. The description continues: “As the pressure mounts, impossible choices will fall on you. Information becomes your greatest weapon, and every piece of intel you gather presents a new opportunity. What will you share? What should never see the light of day? Who can you trust?”

Burn-9 will arrive on PC later this year through Steam. A demo of the game will be available as part of Steam Next Fest, which runs from June 15 to 22. Separately, Fellow Traveller shared a new trailer for Penguin Colony, the next game from Origame Digital, the studio behind 2020’s excellent Umurangi Generation. Penguin Colony is an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time. And look, if the voice of Disco Elysium narrator Lenval Brown isn’t enough to sell you on this game, then surely the fact you witness a host of different human factions, including some Nazis, descend into madness through the eyes of a penguin should be enough. Penguin Colony will arrive later this year on PC and Nintendo Switch 2, with a demo available now on Steam.