IN FULL BLOOM

here’s no guaranteed route to Kickstarter success, but this visually distinctive Metroidvania – and that’s already a good-style exploration and combat with an aesthetic inspired by – though diminutive protagonist Bo, an original yokai design based on a celestial blossom, is more reminiscent of chubby little Chibiterasu than his heavenly mother. The game proudly wears its influences on its sleeve, with Stair tipping his hat towards the likes of , and Ghibli movie Princess Mononoke, while a sequence in which our hero races across the Sencho bridge as it’s consumed by a tsunami is like ’s Ginso Tree escape by way of Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. More than doubling its modest goal within a couple of days, it has all the support it needs to reach fruition, with a planned launch in September 2023 on PC and Switch.