2024 appears impossibly far-off given the state of the world proper now, however with immediately’s announcement of Lucid, a brand new Metroid-y Celeste-like from The Matte Black Studio and Apogee Leisure, at the very least we’ll have a cool new online game to look ahead to when it will definitely rolls spherical. I bought a sneaky early peek at Lucid behind closed doorways at PAX East earlier this 12 months, and let me inform you, its attractive pixel artwork and emphasis on air dashing by means of crystalline boundaries with a honking nice axe appears to be like rad as hell. Let’s admire its gleaming reveal trailer beneath.
Yep, these certain are some large Celeste vibes I am getting from that trailer, all proper. Lucid is not going to be an easy platformer, nevertheless. Its corrupted world of Aedyn is a little more open-ended than Celeste’s mountaintop, with a number of areas to go to, puzzle-y dungeons to sort out, large bosses to combat and plenty of collectibles to tempt you off the crushed path, based on developer The Matte Black Studio. It is extra of a Metroidvania, in different phrases, or, dare I say it, a ‘Celestroid’ maybe?
No matter your portmanteau of choice is, you may be taking part in as Oenn, one of many final remaining sentinels tasked with sustaining the world’s steadiness. Sadly, mentioned world is now riddled with crystals, which you may must destroy along with your 5 distinctive crystal arts to get issues again to regular. These crystal arts are hidden away in tough-looking dungeons, however finally you may be switching between your melee crystal sword, long-range crystal pulse gun, big crystal axe (which helps you to do a imply overhead floor slam) and pogo-esque crystal spear one after the opposite on the fly. It is all in assist of in search of out shattered items of the titular Lucid Big, which lead dev Eric Manahan says you may be utilizing to confront the evil deity that is threatening your homeland.
Once I first noticed Lucid at PAX East, the factor that had me most enthusiastic about it was the best way it requested gamers to chain collectively its varied crystal arts to traverse its yawning chasms and tight corridors, creating an interesting sense of circulation that appears like it is going to be pretty and tactile beneath the thumbs. Whacking these pink crystals to cost up Oenn’s pulse means additionally jogged my memory lots of Ori’s very good Bash assault from Ori And The Blind Forest, which everybody is aware of is one of the best factor to occur to trendy platformers in current reminiscence. Any recreation that channels that together with Celeste’s precision-based air dashes will get an enormous thumbs up from me, and I am excited to see extra of it within the run-up to its launch.
Alas, Lucid is not on account of arrive on PC (and different “platforms of word”) till 2024, however if you wish to keep updated on its growth, you could find out extra over on its Steam web page.