Developer RedBedlam announces Steam early access to Bedlam will begin on August 8th, which we read as a setback, since the first-person shooter was announced for full release in August, a milestone which is now scheduled for autumn. They say the early access version includes 12 levels of gameplay representing about a third of the entire game. Here's word on this project's meta-game theme and how it departs from the novel upon which it is based:

In Bedlam, players will take on the role of Heather Quinn (aka Athena), a programmer at medical scanning developer Neurosphere who finds herself transported into the world of Starfire: a nineties FPS she remembers from her teen years. Searching for an explanation and a way home, she ventures beyond Starfire to discover a vast realm of interconnected game worlds documenting the evolution of the FPS genre and of video games in general.

Bedlam is adapted from the novel by Christopher Brookmyre, but diverges from the original in this change of protagonist. The novel’s hero, Ross Baker, does feature prominently in the game, but the switch to a female lead – who is a gamer and sci-fi fan – offered a fresh and bitingly humorous new perspective upon the “gameverse” that the player will explore.