Sundered, a hand-drawn, Metroid-inspired adventure from the makers of last year’s Jotun, will soon make its way to the PlayStation 4 and PC, and its animation looks like it could very well put Dragon’s Lair to shame.
Thunder Lotus Games creative director William Dubé describes Sundered as a “horrifying fight for survival and sanity” that looks to improved on Jotun in several areas such as replayability and “meaningful choices,” while retaining the art design and boss battles that made the game a success in the first place.
Taking place in an “ever-changing dungeon” and using the world structure of a game like Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the night, protagonist Eshe must use “the power of corrupted relics” to destroy the enormous bosses you’ll stumble across.
A very quick sequence in the announcement trailer shows just what one of those bosses looks like — an enormous, scorpion-like creature with a dangling green skull. The sounds it makes appear to be mechanical, though it’s possible the noise is coming from an organic exoskeleton. Seeing as Dubé says Sundered is drawing heavy influence from Lovecraftian horror, we’d say Thunder Lotus is doing a pretty good job so far.
Sundered‘s visual design is nothing short of breathtaking, with hand-drawn characters and environments that resemble Don Bluth’s work, and the speed of the platforming and intensity of the combat bear a resemblance to last year’s excellent Ori and the Blind Forest.
“We can’t wait to show you more Sundered in the coming months,” Dubé says on the PlayStation Blog. “Thank you for joining us in our journey to make AAA quality games with an indie heart.
Sundered will release on PlayStation 4, Mac, Linux, and Windows PC in 2017. The studio’s previous game Jotun made the move to PlayStation 4 just a few weeks ago.
