Take the punchy, fast-paced fight of a brawler, the tight platforming and exploration of a search-action sport, and a cute dragon companion (who’s additionally the millennia-old god you worship), and mix the whole lot along with a touch of anime aptitude. That’s the recipe for Elta: Defy All Gods, our upcoming sport right here at Afterburner Studios, launching February 2nd, 2027.
Dive in with us as we clarify how our action-platformer brings again the perfect from the classics whereas making it a recent expertise, what impressed us, and why you need to soar into the free demo on PlayStation 5 today.
A brand new tackle action-platformers
Motion-platformers have had a resurgence of curiosity in the previous few years, offering an attention-grabbing mixture of fight, exploration, and story, however few have tried mixing explosive hand-to-hand fights with labyrinthian, non-linear exploration. Elta: Defy All Gods offers simply that: impactful melee motion, mixing martial arts and magic, damaged up by flowing aerial platforming and discovery throughout three winding sci-fi worlds. The problem lies in mastering each fight and navigation; juggling enemies in dynamic encounters throughout sprawling worlds that gained’t all the time maintain your hand.
One of the best ways to clarify our distinctive tackle the style is to coin a brand new time period. We prefer to name Elta: Defy All Gods a “brawlervania”. Brawler fanatics will take pleasure in three martial artwork stances, every with their very own ability bushes, alongside magic methods to unleash built-up vitality in huge assaults. Platforming gamers, alternatively, will get a rising set of motion talents with basic strikes, such because the double soar, sprint, wall run, and grapple. That’s not all although; Elta, your dragon, can be key, by providing you with new distinctive talents to hit more durable and attain beforehand inaccessible areas.
The inspirations behind Elta: Defy All Gods
Veteran gamers will certainly catch nods to collection we grew up with, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Evening, God of Warfare, Darksiders, and Jak and Daxter. We take quite a lot of satisfaction in honoring these classics, however we needed to do extra than simply rehash them. To carve out our personal id inside that acquainted components, we traded conventional weapon-based hacking and slashing for fluid, hand-to-hand martial arts. By weaving your dragon companion’s talents proper into your fights and platforming acrobatics, we hope to convey one thing recent to the desk. To search out that particular vitality, we additionally sought inventive inspiration outdoors of the gaming realm totally.
Shifting to TV screens, shōnen anime, and particularly Dragon Ball Z, have been an enormous inspiration for us, echoing the facility fantasy you’ll be able to expertise enjoying the warrior monk Victus. With such a heavy give attention to melee fight, we additionally turned to Hong Kong martial arts motion pictures, starting from the Ip Man saga to Shaw Brothers’ classics. These influences have been wrapped in a painterly artwork course that makes every vista appear like residing idea artwork. The sense of energy you get whereas enjoying echoes the sense of scale you’re feeling when taking in every panorama.
Reaching excessive ambitions as an indie crew
Regardless of the big-budget video games listed above, we aren’t a big studio by any means. With three co-founders and a dozen core members, delivering on this sport’s promise has been an actual problem for us at Afterburner Studios. It’s one which required us to lean closely on our background in indie growth. We’ve taken classes from our earlier sport into Elta, discovering intelligent methods to realize larger issues with our small-sized crew. Whereas we’ve stayed true to our imaginative and prescient of a modernized tackle basic mechanics, Elta has gone by way of fixed iteration over the course of the final 5 years to permit us to ship the perfect variations of this sport to gamers – each in world, gameplay and tone.
This was additionally made doable by way of a partnership with Focus Leisure, the parents behind Warhammer 40,000: House Marine 2 and Resonance: A Plague Story Legacy. By lending us their design, manufacturing, and QA expertise, they allowed us to increase our imaginative and prescient and deal with a dream undertaking – one that may solely be doable with their assist. As an alternative of getting slowed down by our ambitions, this fruitful partnership allowed us to double down on what we do finest: crafting satisfying sport really feel.
Sport really feel as our primary precedence
At each stage of growth, we’ve gotten the identical suggestions: it is a sport that should be felt, controller in hand, fairly than simply watched. All our mechanics, in each fight and platforming, have been tuned to be as satisfying as doable. Through the use of the haptics of the DualSense controller, touchdown punches and hitting platforms has an actual tactile weight, leading to a extra immersive expertise for PlayStation gamers. In the end, we need to create an action-packed journey that places enjoyable first and continues to defy your expectations for what a small indie crew can pull off.
And also you don’t want to attend to attempt it out for your self: our free demo is on the market at the moment on PS5, permitting you to expertise the very starting of Elta: Defy All Gods. Retrieve the misplaced dragon-god you worship, brawl corrupted enemies in intense melee fight, and discover Lerna, a glacial world stuffed with hidden secrets and techniques, historical ruins, and industrial remnants. The complete sport releases on February 2, 2027, and in case you pre-order, you may get the Vanguard Armor, a particular beauty pores and skin for Victus.
Discover Elta, face off in opposition to the gods and begin the journey to convey salvation to your folks with the free demo, available today on PlayStation 5.