The developer of indie horror games Detention and Devotion, Red Candle Games, has officially announced its next game.
The game, for which the working title is Nine Sols, was announced via the developer's Twitter. It's described as "a lore-rich hand-drawn 2D action platformer with Sekiro-inspired deflection-focussed combat." The team says that it'll be exploring the world of an "ancient alien race" inspired by Asian fantasy.
WIP title #NineSols, a lore rich hand-drawn 2D action platformer with Sekiro-inspired deflection-focused combat. Embark on a journey of Asian fantasy, explore the land once home to an ancient alien race & follow a vengeful hero’s quest to slay 9 Sols, rulers of a forsaken realm pic.twitter.com/yRy4yHtlnFDecember 16, 2021
Other than that description, there's little more to go on apart from the artwork revealed in the announcement. It shows a cat-like creature in a robe standing amid what looks like a mixture of technological components and viscera. The creature is staring down into a puddle of blood, in which is reflected a world of fantastical floating islands.
Having announced its next game in a single sentence in a tweet about an upcoming Netflix adaptation of Detention, Red Candle also offered a very brief work-in-progress teaser of what would eventually become Nine Sols back in March.
That artwork and the inclusion of the parry mechanic that set Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice apart from FromSoftware's previous Soulsborne offerings certainly make for an intriguing premise, but Nine Sols looks like a very different approach for Taiwanese studio Red Candle. Their previous games - Detention, released in 2017, and Devotion, which launched in 2019 - were 2D and first-person horror experiences, respectively.
While both games were critically acclaimed, it was controversy around Devotion that really brought attention to the studio. Shortly after release, it was pulled from storefronts over a hidden area of the game that included what seemed to be criticism of the Chinese government. The game was only put back on sale two years later, on Red Candle's own website.
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