Altered Alma takes carefully timed combat and metroidvania exploration to Neo-Barcelona

It’s normally Tokyo that gets the gritty cyberpunk overhaul in Sci-Fi, that’s not the case in Altered Alma, where it’s Neo-Barcelona that takes the spotlight

Altered Alma is the next title from 2Awesome Studio, the team behind Dimension Drive, AK-xolotl and — more importantly —  Aeon Drive, of which  it shares more than a few things in common.

You might have heard of it following its massive Kickstarter late last year, where it raised just over quarter of a million Euros in funding, over 600% of its goal, or possibly just seen it rattling around. However, you’d be forgiven for confusing it with its predecessor as Altered Alma shares Aeon Drive‘s protagonist, setting and core mechanics. Where it excels, and no doubt the reason why it did so well on Kickstarter, is because it evolves and iterates on that formula in a great way.

Where Aeon Drive was an action platformer, albeit quite a timing- and accuracy-driven one, Altered Alma‘s roots are instead grounded in exploratory metroidvania complete with parrying, dodging and all that good stuff.

I played through an extended demo of it while at the European Game Showcase during GDC, and immediately felt at home in the streets of Neo-Barcelona. It was immediately clear exactly what to expect thanks in part to established genre rules, and things like the health recharge potions, regeneration stations and parrying systems all feel incredibly close to what is clearly a main influence here: Dead Cells and the Souls Genre. Certainly more than the games that give the subgenre its name.

Combat felt quick and responsive, with only short enemy tells and wide hit-zones. Smooth animations — not just on executions, but on parrying and launching around the level — betray its platformer origins, but work perfectly during frantic scenes. In fact, the biggest negative so far is that the early focus on mobility through the teleportation blade and dash-dodge, create a bit of a pull on you which encourages you to rush ahead rather than exploring. It’s not a problem as of yet, especially as early demos have been somewhat linear and force re-treading through shortcut loops, but as the world opens up further there might need to be map indicators for players.

Altered Alma shines brightest in three different places: Its writing; which the team have clearly taken measures to ensure feels human and natural (and they’ve clearly spent a lot of time on the relationship system, although I hardly got to scratch the surface); Its boss battles, which are tense, multi-staged affairs almost certainly impossible to finish on your first attempt; And, its setting of Neo-Barcelona. A large Dali billboard with laser eyes features early on as a component of a boss battle, but that’s simply one of the most visible nods to the rich history of the Catalonian capital.

Altered Alma doesn’t currently have a release date, however when it does release it is expected to do so on Windows PC.