Elderand

A game by Mantra and Sinergia Games for PC and Switch, originally released in 2023.

Elderand is a metroidvania starring a nameless hunter on a quest to stop a zealous cult and its power-mad ruler. Soon after you embark on your journey, you find yourself shipwrecked on a strange shore with nothing but your hunter’s garb. Nearby, you find a sword that gives you a way of dealing with the creatures that lurk all around you… but you’ll need to grow your strength and find more powerful weapons and equipment if you hope to overcome the darkness that has infested every corner of this terrible land.

Your sword grants you a 3-hit combo, but you must stand still to swing it. You can perform a single strike while ducking or jumping, and you have a 2x jump with only slightly variable height. You also have a forward dash and a backstep for quickly closing ground or dodging enemy attacks. As you explore, you discover subweapons in the form of daggers and axes, which work similarly to those in the Castlevania series. By pressing UP+ATTACK, you can toss knives in a straight line or lob axes in an arc, and later you find throwable bombs as well. You also gain access to a bow and arrows, allowing you to strike enemies at a distance, although arrows and subweapons are in limited supply and only appear as random drops from broken objects.

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 2023, Graffiti Games, Mantra, PC, Sinergia Games, Switch

The King’s Bird

A game by Serenity Forge for PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, originally released in 2018.

In The King’s Bird, you take on the role of a girl (possibly a boy) who explores a beautiful world that is under the thumb of a tyrannical ruler. This ruler is able to come and go into the girl’s village as he pleases, but the villagers are unable to escape the bounds of a magical barrier placed around them. The story plays out in pantomime, supplemented with the occasional mural in the background, leaving some of the proceedings up to the interpretation of the player. Early on, the girl gains a new ability that lets her pass through the outer barrier surrounding the village and discover the world beyond.

The girl is incredibly acrobatic. She can wall jump and wall slide, grab onto ledges to mount platforms, and she is able to build up speed in order to make huge leaps. In addition, she has a speed boost ability that allows her to run even faster, and maintaining momentum is needed to dash up slopes, make large leaps, and even run across ceilings. Boosting can also be done to dash upward along vertical surfaces – even immediately upon contact – or used to travel quickly up or down slopes, allowing skilled players to preserve momentum and move incredibly quickly through the environment.

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 2018, Graffiti Games, PC, PS4, Serenity Forge, Switch, Xbox One

Double Cross

A game by 13AM Games for PC and Switch, originally released in 2019.

Double Cross is an action-adventure starring Zahra Sinclair, an agent of RIFT (Regulators of Interdimensional Frontiers and Technology), which is tasked with policing a multiverse of infinite earths containing variations of the planet’s history, some of which have led to drastically different outcomes. Using interdimensional travel, criminals are able make trouble for their neighboring realities, and recently a criminal wearing a mask – and believed to be a former RIFT agent – infiltrated RIFT Headquarters, stealing a dangerous energy source known as the “metacatalyst”, which could potentially be weaponized.

The narrative is quite detailed and takes into account various possible consequences of interdimensional travel, such as a creature entering another world where the dominant species makes an excellent food source, smuggling resources out of one dimension and into another, meeting an alternate version of yourself in another reality, or smaller issues like the much-discussed Mandela Effect, which led to supposed alternate spellings of The Berenstain Bears.

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 13AM Games, 2019, Graffiti Games, PC, Switch