It's been a minute since we've heard from PaperGames, the studio behind the upcoming Soulslike action game, Project: The Perceiver. The debut trailer made a big splash last month with its impressive swordplay and curious mask-based powers, but it left us with more questions than answers. What are the masks for? How do you swap between characters mid-fight? And what's the little white bar floating beside the main character's face?
Thankfully, PaperGames has returned with a 45-minute gameplay reveal that answers many of those questions. For example, that white bar is a resource meter that determines whether you can use the special ability associated with your currently equipped mask. The player character, called The Avatar by the PaperGames devs, starts off with the Mask of Devotion--a quick and nimble character that wields a dao with expert precision, striking with quick stabs before moving onto flowing, acrobatic maneuvers designed to leave opponents both dizzy and dead.
But the Mask of Devotion isn't the only mask the Avatar will don in Project: The Perceiver. Some masks can be found on the side of the road, such as the Mask of Custodio with its heavy charge attacks, but others are taken from the corpses of slain foes, such as the Mask of Saevitia with its underhanded dirt-throwing techniques. And then there's the Mask of Umbra that lets you turn into the dour boss character that awaits at the end of the first stage.
Overall gameplay looks a heckuva lot like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, with characters able to break enemy posture with repeated strikes (or able to have their own posture broken if they just sit there and hold block). A perfect block can also open up enemies to a deadly riposte which can be further supercharged by using their special ability resource.
The gameplay reveal appeared to be a limited demo that just showed Project: The Perceiver's opening stage. It's unknown whether the game will be an open-world title or if it will have a more linear progression like Sekiro. We also don't know when Project: The Perceiver will arrive on PlayStation and PC, or if it will eventually make the leap to Xbox or even the Nintendo Switch. We'll likely find out sometime in 2023.