Earthblade | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Extremely OK Games |
Publisher(s) | Extremely OK Games |
Platform(s) | Windows |
Genre(s) | Action, platform |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Earthblade is an upcoming Metroidvania platform video game developed by Extremely OK Games. Its development began in 2019 and was first publicly announced in 2021. The game's footage was showcased at The Game Awards 2022.
Earthblade is a two-dimensional exploration-action platformer featuring pixel art-styled graphics. [1] [2] [3] Its genre and art style are similar to the developer's previous game, Celeste (2018). [4] The open world game also subscribes to the adventure, especially the Metroidvania subgenre, and fantasy genres. [2] [3] [5] [6] The player controls the character Névoa, who has recently returned to a ruined Earth, as they explore the world, dash between platforms, climb terrain, and fight enemies. [4] [6] [7]
Earthblade is developed by the indie studio Extremely OK Games. [8] [9] The development began in 2019, though it was first publicly announced in April 2021, when the studio also released fragments of its soundtrack composed by Lena Raine. [1] [10] [11] The game's logo was designed by Pedro Medeiros. [10] "When we started working again, we had this urge to run as far away from Celeste as possible", developer Maddy Thorson said. [12] The studio later agreed to include elements of Celeste. [12]
Upon the game's first announcement, the studio first announced the game to be potentially released in 2023, though Thorson said that the game's development "could take longer". [1] [13] Playtesting of the game began in April 2022. [14] Thorson said that the studio would playtest the game each month and hoped to release the game in 2023. [5] [8] Thorson later showcased the first footage of Earthblade at The Game Awards 2022, where it was announced that the game would be released in 2024 instead. [6] [15] The studio announced in March 2024 that the game would be released after 2024, with Thorson adding that the development of the game had not become dormant. [16] In the same announcement, the studio announced that indie developer Kyle Pulver, who previously worked on Super Meat Boy Forever and Offspring Fling , joined the game's development team as a designer. [7] [16] [17]
The game is present on Steam and is set to be released for Windows platforms. [6] [8]
Chris Moyse of Destructoid praised the game's music and looks, as seen in the game's footage at The Game Awards 2022. [6] Shubhankar Parijat of GamingBolt also praised the game's looks in the trailer. [18]
Valve Corporation, also known as Valve Software, is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the game franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead and Dota.
Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games.
Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is a Japanese-American multinational video game and digital entertainment company and a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. Jointly established by two subsidiaries in 2016, it primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game consoles and products. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments.
Arkane Studios SASU is a French video game developer based in Lyon. It was founded in 1999, and released its first game, Arx Fatalis, in 2002. Besides the Lyon studio, Arkane Lyon, Arkane Studios operated Arkane Studios LLC in Austin, Texas, from July 2006 until its closure in May 2024. The studio has created the popular Dishonored series as well as developing Prey (2017), Deathloop (2021) and Redfall (2023). Marvel's Blade is under development.
Ready At Dawn Studios LLC (RAD) was an American video game developer located in Irvine, California, and is composed of former members of Naughty Dog and Blizzard Entertainment. Formed in 2003, the company was closely affiliated with Sony Computer Entertainment, developing games in the God of War series and Daxter. Ready At Dawn had a satellite campus in Portland, Oregon, to assist with future PC and console game development, but closed the office in 2022 as they adapted a hybrid work model. The studio was acquired by Oculus Studios as of June 2020. On August 7, 2024, Ready at Dawn was closed by Reality Labs.
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console, augmented reality, and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.
PlayStation Studios is a division of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) that oversees the video game development at the studios owned by SIE. The division was established as SCE Worldwide Studios in September 2005 and rebranded as PlayStation Studios in 2020.
NetherRealm Studios is an American video game developer based in Chicago and owned by Warner Bros. Games. Led by video game industry veteran and Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, the studio is in charge of developing the Mortal Kombat and Injustice series of fighting games.
MonoGame is a free and open source C# framework used by game developers to make games for multiple platforms and other systems. It is also used to make Windows and Windows Phone games run on other systems. It supports iOS, Android, macOS, tvOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It implements the Microsoft XNA 4 application programming interface (API). It has been used for several games, including Bastion, Celeste,Fez and Stardew Valley.
TowerFall is an action indie video game created by Maddy Thorson through her company Maddy Makes Games. In the game, players control up to four archers in a multiplayer platform fighter. It was released on the Ouya microconsole in June 2013 and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Linux, OS X, and Windows as TowerFall Ascension and to the Nintendo Switch under its original title of TowerFall.
Madeline Stephanie Thorson is a Canadian video game developer, known as one of the lead creators for the video games TowerFall and Celeste, developed under the studio Maddy Makes Games. Since September 2019, Thorson has worked as Director of R&D at Extremely OK Games.
Sickhead Games, LLC is an American independent game development studio founded in 2002. It is best known for its multiplatform turn-based strategy game ARMED!, its involvement with the MonoGame framework and Torque series of game engines, and the development of several PlayStation 4/5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch ports of indie games including TowerFall Ascension, Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Slay the Spire, and Axiom Verge. The studio has updated classic console and PC games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, including ExZeus, Enclave, and Grandia, to run on modern gaming systems.
Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games and/or platformers focused on guided non-linearity and utility-gated exploration and progression. The term is a portmanteau of the names of the video game series Metroid and Castlevania, based on the template from Metroid (1986), Castlevania II (1987), Super Metroid (1994), and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997).
Moon Studios GmbH is an Austrian video game developer founded in 2010. They are best known for their 2015 title Ori and the Blind Forest, for which the studio was awarded the Best Debut award at the 2016 Game Developers Choice Awards. In 2020, the studio released a sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
Celeste is a 2018 platform game developed and published by indie studio Maddy Makes Games. The player controls Madeline, a young woman with anxiety and depression who aims to climb Celeste Mountain. During her climb, she encounters several characters, including Part of You, a personification of her self-doubt who attempts to stop her from climbing the mountain.
Boundless is a massively multiplayer online sandbox game, developed by Guildford-based studio Wonderstruck Games. It was released through Early access on Steam for Microsoft Windows and OS X on November 13, 2014. It was fully released on September 11, 2018, and features online cross-play across all regions with PlayStation 4.
Madeline is a fictional character who serves as the main protagonist of the video game Celeste by Maddy Thorson. Throughout the game, she climbs the titular Mount Celeste, simultaneously dealing with anxiety and other issues. The character is notable as one of the few transgender protagonist characters in the video game industry: her identity as a trans woman was confirmed by Thorson in 2020, after the release of Farewell, a downloadable content expansion pack for Celeste, which received significant media coverage.
Silent Hill 2 is an upcoming survival horror game developed by Bloober Team and published by Konami. It is a remake to the 2001's game of the same name, originally developed by Team Silent, a group within Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo (KCET). It will be the first major installment in the Silent Hill series since Silent Hill: Downpour (2012). Like the original game, it follows James Sunderland, a widower, who returns to the eponymous town of Silent Hill upon receiving a letter from his deceased wife, Mary, who claims to be waiting there for him.
Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain is a 2024 3D platformer video game developed and published by Canadian indie studio Extremely OK Games for Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows. The game was developed during a week long game jam, in which it released in celebration of the sixth anniversary of the 2018 video game Celeste. The game released January 29, 2024, acting as semi-sequel to that game and a continuation to its narrative.