Indie platformer was announced back in 2021, and after three years of waiting it’s finally releasing soon. During the June 8 , developer Kitsune Games announced will be launching on August 1, with a demo currently available on . After spending time with a press demo (which included one more world than the public demo) I am optimistic about the game’s melding of retro-platforming and a heart-warming love story, even if it still has some kinks to work out.
In , you control the fox girl Yuzu as she goes on an adventure through platforming levels inspired by traditional Japanese mythology, though ’ main inspiration is . If you’ve played , you’ll feel pretty at home here. That’s because movement feels so incredibly similar to , from the sprinting mechanic where you build up speed the longer you are moving in the same direction, to the jump height and distance feeling the same as the 1988 game.
Even certain power-ups like ’s have one-to-one replications in . But similarly to what I discovered with the new -inspired indie game , weaknesses also lie in how close it tries to stick to its inspiration. Movement feels a bit floatier than it should, and my first gameplay moments were full of missing jumps because Yuzu wouldn’t land where I expected her to.
I also found that I couldn’t get as close to some enemies as I expected due to the hit box sizes. And the aforementioned invincibility power-up, clearly a nod to , is a bit difficult to use at the moment. The power-up .