Following Earthblade’s reveal trailer at the Game Awards, Extremely OK Games, the developers behind the critically acclaimed indie platformer Celeste, livestreamed an hour-long Q&A where they confirmed, among many other things, that their new title Earthblade will have no loading screens.
The trailer did show off an interconnected side-scrolling world, but now we know for sure that there will be virtually no points of friction between its different areas. “Seamlessness is the defining feature of the game,” said Maddy Thorson, one of the Earthblade’s lead developers, as they claim it’s something that shapes every other one of their development strategies.
The team describes Earthblade as completely non-linear, a significant departure from Celeste, which was divided into traditional platforming levels. Though they have no problem with people describing the game as a Metroidvania, and they admit the game’s resemblance to the sub-genre, they contend that “it doesn’t feat neatly into it.” There are some key aspects that differentiate it, such as the game’s boundaries not being as strict.
At one point in the Q&A, the team gets asked about traversal, and they make a point to confirm that, as the trailer shows, this game will have a much bigger emphasis on combat, as opposed to Celeste’s emphasis on traversal. However, movement is still something they deem important and something they take into account when crafting interactions. They also confirm that the game will not have grinding, meaning you’ll not have to farm weak enemies to gain some sort of upper hand, and they believe that players won’t die as much as in Celeste.
When it comes to what tools players will have when battling enemies in the Earthblade’s hand-crafted levels, not much was revealed, but they did state one particularly intriguing detail, which is that this game will have you mapping items to buttons, not unlike The Legend of Zelda. If so, it can be understood that the game will have multiple items to collect, and you’ll be able to choose among them in order to create the combat arsenal you like best.
Finally, when discussing Earthblade’s far-off 2024 release date, the team explained the various challenges they faced throughout development, such as Covid, immigration, and newborn kids. Artist Pedro Medeiros stated that to play it safe, they’re “almost overshooting” with the 2024 window, which hopefully means that Earthblade will release around the earlier side of the year.
