This perfectly retro Metroidvania is the last thing I'd expect: a sci-fi World War II adventure about killing Nazi monsters in the Bermuda Triangle

It takes a certain type of action hero to carry an action game about killing Nazi monsters in the Bermuda Triangle, but I reckon somebody named Captain Chuck "Wolfhound" Rossetti is up to the task. The captain is the star of upcoming Metroidvania Wolfhound, which looks like an impressive commitment to the retro bit, right down to the over-the-top monikers.

An "evil, shrouded island" in the Bermuda Triangle becomes a testbed for Nazi experiments gone wrong. Rossetti heads in to take down - here's another fantastic name - Dr. Steiner and his battalion of mutants. Jetpacks, gravity boots, giant spider bosses - classic.

Wolfhound is a 2D sidescrolling Metroidvania that's retro in the purest sense. It's the latest from Bit Kid, the creator of Chasm, a semi-procedural Metroidvania-inspired platformer that was received pretty well a few years ago. Wolfhound promises an authentic 8-bit experience down to the last pixel. 

“While I’ve always been a big fan of retro games and pixel art, I really wanted to dive deep into the style of NES and 8-bit gaming,” said Bit Kid founder and lead dev James Petruzzi. “We’re aiming to be as authentic as possible, stylistically: an 8-bit color palette, 320x180 pixel resolution, and a soundtrack composed in Famitracker which has enabled homebrewers to create authentic NES music for many years.”

I was already interested by this point, and my ears really perked up when I saw that devs from the delightful Shantae series and Freedom Planet 2 were on board as well. The retro soundtrack comes from Cave Story's RushJet1 to top it off. Rossetti is described as a one-man army, and Bit Kid's formed its own Metroidvania army with some of the greats. 

Wolfhound is coming to Switch, PS5, and PC in 2025.

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Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.