Ease the wait for Silksong with the upcoming demo of this very Hollow Knight-looking Metroidvania

When Edwin popped the reveal trailer for new Metroidvania Deviator into The Maw this morning, he really wasn’t kidding about it looking a heck of a lot like Hollow Knight. You’ve got a small, diminutive hero with a nasty little blade up his sleeve, a haunting and melancholy piano score, a beautiful hand-drawn animation style, and lots of mean-looking creatures to fight. Then again, the trailer also makes it clear there are lots and lots of spikes and traps to navigate here, which puts me more in the mind of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Either way, I’m well up for another platforming-Metroidy hybrid, and developers Gami Studio have announced that there’s Steam demo coming in February.

The full game is due out sometime later in 2024, but at least the demo should provide a nice little pick-me-up as the wait for Hollow Knight: Silksong continues. It’s currently unclear whether the demo will be part of Steam’s February Next Fest, but I’ll be checking it out regardless when it arrives, as yes, its ‘deflection’ parry and very natty-looking dash attack look right up my street.

In their most recent dev log video, the developers also go into a bit more detail about the setting of Deviator and what your main objective is. The world of the game is suffering some kind of deviation from reality, they say, where people’s memories no longer match up with their surroundings. You play as the titular Deviator, and you’ll be using “consciousness powers” to solve problems and bring the world back together again.

Different regions of the game will also be based on different cultures and art styles, they continue. They show a religious city that has quite big Blasphemous energy, for example, as well as a forest with lots of cute mushroom creatures and sprites having a jamming session in the woods.

The most interesting part of the video for me, though, is the behind-the-scenes look at the levels themselves. The devs show how they created multiple world layers to bring each scene together, and it’s a neat dive into how 2D Metroidvania games are made these days.

Small shout-out, too, to the adorable little mushroom assassin, whose hand-drawn animation attacks gets broken down frame-by-frame around the four-minute mark.

Personally, I think there’s a lot of promise here, especially as it seems to be leaning more heavily into platform challenges a la The Lost Crown than Hollow Knight proper. Here’s hoping it feels as good as it looks when the demo arrives on Steam next month.