It takes place in 2032, and you take on the role of Harry G, a scientist who takes part in the secretive experiment about going through the alternate dimensions for the betterment of humanity. Genre's conventions mandate that he arrives alone and with only a few logs left behind by the past participants, and he must untangle the mystery from there.
Tropes present in Interpoint:
- Another Dimension: All the events take place in the parallel worlds.
- Apocalyptic Log: You find a couple of them in the other dimension, one from a scie, and another from a cook. The latter starts with him getting excited about the high pay the company offers and ends with the eventual realization they were abandoned in the other dimension. The second-to-last entry says he intends to go to the surface no matter what. The last entry, made a day later, is a just a single lower-case letter "i". Then, you put it down, spot a small bloodstain nearby, and then notice a human figure wreathed in shadows stumbling towards you...
- Blackout Basement: Some sections of the are only illuminated by the rare flickering lamps and are completely pitch black outside of their radius, with the effect no different to just turning off your screen.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: In the Early Access version, at least, getting caught by the shadowy creatures simply instantly sends you to a "prison" cell that's trivial to escape from.
- Fantastic Flora: While the first alternate dimension still looks very conventional, the second one has bright red grass and ferns along with the human-sized glowing blue mushrooms, all growing on the small floating islands. Amusingly, a note found nearby says that the workers managed to turn them into a great soup. It also mentions that another island has green fungi, but it only grows there because of the huge level of radiation.
- First-Person Ghost: The player cannot see any part of their own body.
- Floating Continent: In the second alternate dimension you mainly travel on the islands floating in the sky.
- Force-Field Door: Some doors in the alternate dimension buildings are barred by a green isolation field in front of them. This field can be drained by the handheld energy manipulator you find nearby.
- Genre Shift: The opening, with its bright colors and the large display addressing you as a test subject, brings Portal to mind, and the first few minutes are set in a seemingly hi-tech and sterile test facility. Then, you actually go through the portal and end up outdoors.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: The portable energy manipulator research instructions contain phrases like "Pull the handle to yourself [RMB]", and "you can initiate the energy discharge by pressing the middle button on the device screen [MMB].
- Heroic Mime: The protagonist never speaks or otherwise comments on what you encounter.
- No OSHA Compliance: The first note you find is a complaint by a construction crew worker about having to build the whole facility in two shifts per day due to a lack of personnel, and the inherent unsafety of building something while suspended above a void.
- Patrolling Mook: The shambling shadow humanoids. It appears that they are the former members of the previous expedition, like the cook whose diary you read right before encountering him in the shadow form. They will send you to the "prison" part of the complex if they catch you, and appear completely invulnerable to the "laser" beam from your energy manipulator that can cut through glass. However, they can literally do nothing but walk, and will only catch you if they collide with you - reaching out to grab you as you walk past them is currently beyond their comprehension, and they cannot open doors either. Moreover, you can temporarily pin them in place with the immobilization beam.
- Power Crystal: The Portal energy manipulator you find in the building on the parallel world requires energy crystals to function. Later on, you discover that the mining of these crystals from the alternate dimension is the main reason the facility is kept around. As expected, it's dangerous simply because damaging the structural integrity of the crystal causes it to immediately release all the stored energy with explosive results.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The shadowy humanoids have faint red eyes as the only spot of colour on their bodies. They are also the only way to spot them in the complete darkness.
- Sickly Green Glow: Subverted - this kind of glow appears in the game, but is used for the immobilization fields, which are pretty safe, whereas the actual radioactive waste seen in the game glows with blue Cherenkov radiation, much like it does in real life.
- Story Breadcrumbs: So far, you can only gain glimpses of the plot through the various notes, which are generally very dry and technical, since they are written for communication between the people who already know what's going on and have no interest in explaining it for random strangers.
