2024 appears impossibly far-off given the state of the world proper now, however with at the moment’s announcement of Lucid, a brand new Metroid-y Celeste-like from The Matte Black Studio and Apogee Entertainment, not less than we’ll have a cool new online game to stay up for when it will definitely rolls spherical. I received a sneaky early peek at Lucid behind closed doorways at PAX East earlier this yr, and let me let you know, its beautiful pixel artwork and emphasis on air dashing via crystalline boundaries with a honking nice axe seems rad as hell. Let’s admire its gleaming reveal trailer under.

Yep, these positive are some huge Celeste vibes I’m getting from that trailer, all proper. Lucid is not going to be a simple platformer, nevertheless. Its corrupted world of Aedyn is a little more open-ended than Celeste’s mountaintop, with a number of places to go to, puzzle-y dungeons to deal with, huge bosses to combat and many collectibles to tempt you off the overwhelmed path, in accordance with developer The Matte Black Studio. It’s extra of a Metroidvania, in different phrases, or, dare I say it, a ‘Celestroid’ maybe?

Whatever your portmanteau of desire is, you will be enjoying as Oenn, one of many final remaining sentinels tasked with sustaining the world’s stability. Unfortunately, mentioned world is now riddled with crystals, which you will must destroy together with your 5 distinctive crystal arts to get issues again to regular. These crystal arts are hidden away in tough-looking dungeons, however finally you will be switching between your melee crystal sword, long-range crystal pulse gun, big crystal axe (which helps you to do a imply overhead floor slam) and pogo-esque crystal spear one after the opposite on the fly. It’s all in assist of looking for out shattered items of the titular Lucid Giant, which lead dev Eric Manahan says you will be utilizing to confront the evil deity that is threatening your homeland.

When I first noticed Lucid at PAX East, the factor that had me most enthusiastic about it was the way in which it requested gamers to chain collectively its varied crystal arts to traverse its yawning chasms and tight corridors, creating an interesting sense of movement that appears like will probably be beautiful and tactile beneath the thumbs. Whacking these pink crystals to cost up Oenn’s pulse capability additionally jogged my memory numerous Ori’s very good Bash assault from Ori And The Blind Forest, which everybody is aware of is the smartest thing to occur to trendy platformers in current reminiscence. Any sport that channels that together with Celeste’s precision-based air dashes will get a giant thumbs up from me, and I’m excited to see extra of it within the run-up to its launch.

Alas, Lucid is not because of arrive on PC (and different “platforms of notice”) till 2024, however if you wish to keep updated on its growth, you could find out extra over on its Steam web page.