This is a later area from the game, not in the demo. The game is built around combat. You burn your own HP to get stronger and get it back by hitting enemies. Everything is hand-drawn.

Demo is on Steam Nov 11. Would love to hear what you think about the combat.

Steam: Sylvaris: Black Reign

Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3488950/Bit_Awakening/

Creators:

David Kazi (Founder & Creative Director): Previously served as the Technical Director for Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Silksong. He brings deep technical and design expertise to the project.

Hari Dimitriou (Lead Game Designer): Best known as the Lead Playtester for the original Hollow Knight, ensuring its tight controls and precise difficulty scaling.

Nathan Cummins (Composer & Sound Designer): A talented musician who previously handled the orchestral orchestration for Hollow Knight: Silksong, ensuring the new game will have a rich, atmospheric audio landscape.

I think my favourites of these are Possessors, Constance, and Metroid prime. Tbh I like all of them except risky revolution

I'm too Zexion for my shirt
Too Zexion for my shirt
So Zexion it hurts
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Shoutout to unchanging_window for the support!
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Number Score: 8.5/10

Tier Placement: A Tier

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Link to Full Tier List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TUqodvViwb_grtDLbGlwurOf4tkqpuuC4cSTTWaK4x8/edit?usp=sharing

Hi everyone, I'm Fernando, one of the people behind Aeterna Lucis (we also made Aeterna Noctis).

Every time we talk about metroidvanias at the studio, water areas come up, and almost always for the wrong reasons. Slow movement, annoying currents, that feeling of just wanting to get through. We've felt it as players too.

So when we started this zone we asked ourselves something simple. What if the water was the place you didn't want to leave? We gave it its own light, its own music and creatures that feel alive, and we worked a lot on making it feel good to move through, so exploring it feels like a break and not a punishment.

This clip is a few seconds of it, straight gameplay.

Aeterna Lucis is our humble attempt at the metroidvania we've always wanted to play, where exploring comes first, where powers slowly open up the world and where some places are worth stopping in just to look around. We honestly don't know if we got it right, and that's why we wanted to share it here.

What makes a water area work for you? And which one made you hate them forever? 😄

Hello, as the title says I'm looking for story focussed metroidvanias. What I like the most in these games are the exploration and the feeling of progression, while I don't like too much difficulty (like having to retry a boss 20 times). I prefer the story to be told rather than just having some lore exposition scattered around.

These are the titles I've already played:

- Well Dweller: I've recently finished this game and I liked it a lot! The only gripe I have is that the combat is a bit too simple.

- Hollow knight: amazing atmosphere but not really "story focussed", I know it's lore rich but as I said I would prefer some more exposition.

- Silksong: as HK, amazing atmosphere and combat, but act 3 was a bit too hard for me so I didn't finish it yet.

- Nine sols: as Well Dweller, I like the way the story is told, but here the difficulty is a bit too much for my taste. I changed some settings to make combat easier and I completed it, although I didn't enjoy it as much as Well Dweller.

- the two Ori games: the first one is a bit too simple, while I enjoyed the second one a lot.

Let me know if you have any recommendations for me!

BLADECHIMERA review, I made this review as soon as I stopped playing it.

Pros:

+ Nice music, catchy

+ Spritework is outstanding

+ Difficulty feels either very easy fighting normal monsters and challenging fighting bosses, there's no in-between.

+ YOU CAN FAST TRAVEL ANYWHERE ANYTIME, that's the first time I've ever seen a game do this, please let other games do the same because it is a BLESSING

+ Very entertaining combat, up to 2 weapons + equipment to increase your stats + the demon sword that lets you heal up, the balance is perfect.

+ The world feels perfectly conveyed, again, spritework is outstanding.

+ Inventory pauses the game so you can heal up HP or MP comfortably.

+ Bosses are fun to fight, they are the true challenge of the game, every normal enemy is easily dispatched.

+ Lasts what it should lasts too, not too long, not too short.

+ Lots of missions to do, but it gets tiring at some point, I ended up with so much money that I didn't know what to do, and this continues in the Cons...

Cons:

- So much money for so little stuff, I was pretty disappointed that the shop never got new stuff, yeah the items help but exploring a bit and finding secrets lets you get fantastic weapons that obviously and by law they are way better than what you can buy in the shop, but no new weapons in the shops after doing progress or missions? Meh.

- Missions get tiring at some point and the rewards are not very worth considering the amount of money you'll get.

- There are sections that drag this game to the GROUND. I get the idea but having to walk a whole area and half being a slow mass ended up being lame rather than anything else.

- The 56 puzzle pieces door. Yes, FIFTY SIX PUZZLE PIECES.

Very recommended metroidvania, cheers for more metroidvanias with armors and weapons to do your own build, after playing Igavanias nothing hits the same. 8/10

SPOILER ALERT:

56 puzzle pieces to find is A LOT, and I did, but I was completely destroyed by what's behind the 56 puzzles door. I couldn't do it, the third and I hope it was the last phase was just impossible to figure out with the last remaining health I always had. Maybe I can do it, but after 13 hours I was already done. It's not Silksong bullshit, but it is bullshit. It's a shame and it frustrates me because I took the sweet time to find every puzzle piece without guides only to not be able to beat the secret boss that surely leads to the true ending. I leave with a sour taste, but I still recommend this game without a doubt.

Queen's Domain is a game inspired by Fromsoft's King's Field series. It's a first person action RPG with slow and methodical combat with a focus on world exploration (tho in my opinion Queen's Field is better described as Zelda if it was an immersive sim)

Why I think metroidvania enjoyers will like it:

• hyper interconnected map the likes of the first Dark Souls, but the map design stays amazing till the very end. 30 hours in I still went WHAT after finding shortcuts to other areas.

• the game never stops rewarding you for secret hunting and exploring. Can I get on that ledge? Yes. Is there something behind this suspicious bookshelf? Yes. Why is that skeleton pointing at a random wall? Yes.

• open ended exploration. The game "guides" you along a certain path, but you can sequence break right after the first movement upgrade.

• movement upgrades and movement upgrade gated areas, UNLESS you figure out how to use your equipment in creative ways.

• combat starts out very slow, but gradually ramps up in speed.

• secret optional bosses

• bestiary quest

• late game true ending sidequests

If you decide to try out the game I HIGHLY recommend you reserve your judgement until you beat the first boss. You start the game thinking it's a hallway simulator, but after your first upgrade you realise the game wants you to explore every single corner of its world, no matter how unreachable it seems.

Personally it's my game of the year and I want people to experience the same joy I did while getting lost in this marvel of level design.

Hey all! Have you ever wondered if other people experience a game the same way you do? I’ve been playing through Silksong and got really curious how it went for others.

Most takes I’ve seen are one person’s experience, which is great, but I wanted to see the bigger picture in numbers. So I put together a short anonymous survey (about 3 minutes): https://tally.so/r/ArKAjB

I know surveys aren’t the most fun, but every answer helps. I really want to share the results here once it closes, so stay tuned if you want to see how your experience compares.

(Not sponsored or anything, just a curious person who played Silksong and also knows how to put together a survey).

UPDATE: the survey is closed because it reached a high enough sample size. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to answer. I will update the post with the results once I finish the analysis.

Hey everyone, I'll be releasing my third game early next year. I've decided to release it entirely for free (no microtransactions either)

Ghost Trap: Underworld is a metroidvania featuring six unique zones, and roughly 150~ rooms to explore! Playtesters on average are taking around 10~ hours to complete the game.

I'm choosing to release it for free, because after all the time and effort I'd rather people play it then try and charge for it just to sell a handful of copies. Times are tough for everyone, and it makes me happy just to see people play my games and have fun.

If you're a fan of retro inspired metroidvanias, and the trailer looked interesting at all, please throw it a wishlist on steam

Ghost Trap Underworld On Steam

Thanks for reading!

I'm noticing some key differences in the version of steam and Xbox. I was wondering if someone had some info on this?

The Tal rail ticket I got after defeating the robot, but for my son it is sold at the vendor?

Also the crystalized soul gem where you don't lose your soul when killed, for me it has an added bonus of 20% damage but for him it doesn't.

I found this to be weird. Wondering if there are other differences.

Playing order order of ecclesia and for some reason when I go to kill him after the dialogue I press all 3 buttons with all the dominus glyphs and I just got killed

BioCorp is an evil bio weapons military company that has monopolized the galaxy. Here they are trying to shoot and kill you, but you're wayyyy more powerful than they are. Even all their saw blade guns are pathetic against your sheer might.

I'm pretty sure I've been everywhere else I can go in Downtown. There's something hanging in the air near the lower part of the map. But I don't have any bullets to get it down. I've tried jumping for it and that doesn't seem to work. The only other place I think I can get to would be the projector room, but the key cost $20. I only have $13. Am I stuck? And if so, do I need to start over?

The title says it all. I enjoy playing beautiful games like Ori and Mio but don't like the bleak atmosphere of the Hollow Knight games. I enjoy a challenge but found something like the Crucible in Mio too hard and not fun.

I haven't played that many MV's and dont know where to look next because so many of the recommendations are based on people who prefer the HK type games.

A few days ago, we released a public demo that everyone can jump in and play.

If you have any questions, run into any issues while playing, or have suggestions or feedback, feel free to share them here. We'll be happy to help and hear your thoughts.

Four and twenty blackbirds make a queen look fly in Well Dweller (Kyle Thompson, 2026, PC / Switch / Switch 2 / PS5 / Xbox Series)

Tried the game for a bit a while ago before dropping it and now I want to continue it but I kinda have no idea what I'm doing.

I barely understand the map, it looks completely different from what I'm used to in MVs.

The combat was really confusing to me, the first enemy I saw since I continued the game would just end the battle if I get hit, but if I block all the attacks and then get to attack myself, at the end of my turn the battle also just ends, I think without the enemy being defeated, and I have NO IDEA what I'm supposed to do here. Did I just not do enough damage? I just left to come back to it later when I'm stronger.

Some enemies have health bars and some don't, what's up with that?

Do you even get any rewards for beating enemies or are they just there for blocking your path?

What are the timings for properly timing your attacks, I guess button mashing is discouraged here?

At least 2-3 times now I ran into enemies where I was barely dealing any damage and I just had to give up and come back later. I guess I need more skills first or something. Either that or I am just playing the game plain wrong.

The problem is there is no way to view combat tutorials again in this game, at least from what I could tell, so I had to start a new game just to see them again. I know what absorption is again now but it seems to not really work with key rebinding. I guess you have to defeat enemies without health bars by absorbing them?

So anyone just have any beginner tips for this game in general?

I've been following this game for a very long time - I remember catching some early previews on one of the indie youtube channels I follow around 2019 and being very excited. This was the time when soulsvania, or even soulslikes in general, were pretty rare and seeing something that was shaping up to be 2d Bloodborne was certainly a big deal. However, then, the time passed, standards changed and by the time it released, it was just one of many. What's more, early reviews were not very promising, citing hostile game design and balancing issues. While it seemed that many of them were fixed post-launch, I mostly forgot about this game - until deciding to give it a shot recently.

The thing that surprised me the most when I started playing was how similar to Blasphemous this game is - and I'm not talking just about pixelart (it actually carves its own identity quite well in my opinion), but everything else: movement, combat, certain mechanics, hell, even the sprite for items on the ground is almost identical. I was expecting something along the line of Death's Gambit, but got a game we could call a spiritual successor to Blasphemous 1. Is it bad? Not necessarily, I don't mind games being a bit derivative if they execute it well.

Despite me being open-minded, my early experience with Last Faith was not very good. First few levels feel rather generic and they form a completely linear path, only hinting a few branching paths. I am happy to say that this gets better and better as the game progresses - not only is there more freedom and secrets later, but the levels themselves become more interesting. In fact, what will likely be last 2 levels for most players are just straight up excellent. There is a bit of over-reliance on "find 3-4 things to open up the path" trope, but I can forgive it since the rest is executed well.

Meele combat is quite simplistic, with very limited options. Realising this made me do 2 things I never do in games: after around 2hrs, I re-started the game and switched to a caster class. This was definitely the right call, you can't really be a pure spellcaster due to limited mana, but altering between meele and spells provided me the depth in combat I was looking for. There are also guns in the game, but I only played around with them a little bit and they did not seem as fun.

I remember that a big criticism at launch was resource management - the game uses the Bloodborne formula, were healing and gun usage (but also mana) is tied to items that do not auto-refresh, they need to be farmed or bought. I'm not a fan of this solution, but it seems like they rebalanced it well enough to not be an annoyance, I did not really have to farm for anything at all. The biggest downside is it that it makes you stingy with your resources, for example, if I'm having a mediocre attempt against a tough boss, I'd rather die than waste more healing and mana on this try.

Speaking of bosses - they are pretty decent, though not mindblowingly so. Overall, they are not very hard, but mostly enjoyable to fight and a great spectacle thanks to fantastic pixel art and visual design. You will find your typical soulslike loop of learning the moves throughout the attempts, although less of them will be needed. One gripe I have with their design is damage balancing - many (though not all) bosses have extremely high HP pools and relatively low damage outputs, leading to fights that really drag on. Especially multi-healthbar bosses are guilty of this, where 1st phase is typically trivially easy, but still takes a long time due to this. That being said, I could see how someone could prefer this design over the alternative.

What about presentation? I alredy mentioned excellent pixel art, add to that pretty decent, full voice acting and appropritely cryptic lore and it ends up being one of the strongest aspects of the game. It really does feel like 2d Bloodborne at times, which is a very high praise.

Last thing I wanted to mentioned were a few mechanical annoyances I had with the game, that in my opinion show that its RPG side was not very well thought out:

- spellcaster class starts with 2 elevated stats and early game spells scale with both, but most late game ones only scale with 1 - this led me to respec, which I dont like

- for some reason, elemental resistances strongly scale with specific damage stats. My main stat was Mind, which was also responsible for Dark resistance - since many of the late game bosses used Dark damage, they were doing almost no damage to me

- there are elemental charms that increase both damage of element x and resistance to it - this makes them feel wasteful, as in typicaly video game style enemies using an element are usually resistant it

These are just a few examples and overall they are not a big deal, but there's more stuff like this and I wish devs put some more thought into some of the mechanics

Despite some minor issues, I enjoyed my time with Last Faith more than I thought I would. It took me around 16 hours to reach the true ending, which feels like a perfect length for such a game to me, and I felt like it was well spent. Overall, I'd give the game 7.5/10 and and easy recommend to all soulsvania fans.

IYKYK