Celeste's creator Maddy Thornson is back with yet another sidscreolling adventure, chock full of swamps. Souls fans will be delighted. A shift from Celeste, it boasts combat to compliment its platforming, as you can traverse those swamps to cut down all the green little critters. It's called Earthblade, coming in 2024.
"You are Névoa, an enigmatic child of Fate returning at long last to Earth, in this explor-action platformer," the description reads. "Earthblade's lush pixel art world offers seamless exploration, challenging combat, and countless mysteries to pick apart. Traverse the remnants of a ruined world, encounter denizens both friend and foe, and piece together the Earth's fractured history."
It's live on Steam right now, so you can pop it in your wishlist if it looks up your street. However, it's a little ways off yet, so don't expect to add it to your library any time soon. There are hellish-looking levels, twisted Lovecraftian churches with stained glass windows boasting creepy little eyes, mountaintop peaks guarded by knights, and tall climable trees. Or you can venture underwater to Atlantis-like ruins.
It was first announced in a "vibe reveal" back in 2021 by Thornson, though this didn't come with much in the way of story. Details are starting to trickle in now, though, as we're set to uncover a ruined world and discover just what happened like a post-apocalyptic archeologist tasked with fending off monsters while they try to dig up some bones.
Earlier this year - in April - Thornson announced that it had entered private testing. This came with a screenshot that teased the new fantasy-like setting that sets it apart from 2018's Celeste, as we can see in the new The Game Awards trailer. These playtests have been kept private, conducted by friends unfamiliar with the project. "The cadence feels right for the team and the project right now," Thorson said. "We suspect we'll want the playtest frequency to increase as we progress further, as the changes we're making become more granular and a higher feedback interval beomes more valuable to really finetune everything into its final form."