I've woken up on a beach. I'm staring up into the nostrils of a bald man whose face looks to be made of wet clay. He's saying vaguely threatening things about a tower and my race and an island and the fact I'm far from home. The dialogue camera of The Lantern of the Laughless Saint clearly picks up on how unnerved this introduction to its adventure has made me.

It pings back and forth between close-ups of my tortured visage - zooming in on my bald spot, brown moustache, and bright red eyes which are far too close together - and the equally weird face of the bloke interrogating me. At one point, it decides to look over his shoulder, but only keep focus on the bits of his cheek and neck which happen to be caught in the shot. The result's worthy of any spot a tech-averse old man's phone camera roll. My character, Bob, wants out of this chat. "I want nothing to do this, madman," he declares as the sun stings the beetroot pink streaks across his skin.

Eventually, the madman runs off to go and find a tower. Bob still can't let his guard down. The madman's gone, but the unhinged dialogue camera's still here. It's also crafty. It bides its time. Bob chats to various people around the starter town of Magdal's Rest. None of them activate the same dialogue camera as that first madman. Then...ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

The merchant Pichess has activated it! It randomly decides to focus in on his ear as he hands Bob a quest to fetch some lost goods from the skeleton-infested road just outside of town. At least the quest earns Bob the key to a shack in town, somewhere he can shelter from the threat of camera ambushes and plan how he plans to tackle exploring the rest of the island. The latter will be saved for whenever I get time to play more than the first half an hour of The Lantern of the Laughless Saint.

Based on this small bite of it, most of which I spent giggling at freaky faces and wonky shots of them, it feels like a blend of stated inspiration Morrowind and Oblivion's brilliantly wacky Shivering Isles expansion. Mechanically, it's much more Morrowindy, but the tone of the island's loose community of eccentric cast-offs wouldn't feel out of place in Passwall or one of hamlets on the Mania side of Sheogorath's realm.

As such, NerveLabs' creation is a game I'll be keeping an eye on following its release in early access earlier this week. The devs are planning to update it every one or two weeks while it's in early access, and have it ready for a full release in less than a year. If you fancy wishlisting it, you can do so on Steam.