Devotion devs next game Nine Sols has already smashed its crowdfunding goal

rockpapershotgun.com:

The Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games have put up a crowdfunding page for their latest project Nine Sols, and it looks promising. It’s an action platformer with gorgeous hand-drawn animation work, and as Red Candle put it, it’s “a journey of Asian fantasy inspired by Sekiro, Hollow Knight and Katana Zero.” That’s me sold. And clearly a lot of other people agree too, because Nine Sols broke its goal of three million Taiwanese dollars (that’s roughly £80,000) within 24 hours.

It looks to be quite the departure from the studio’s previous two games, Detention and Devotion, both of which were firmly psychological horror games. With Nine Sols, though, Red Candle Games are calling it “Taopunk” – “we had a clear goal of combining Taoism with cyberpunk, melding sci-fi elements with Eastern mythology.” Red Candle have also put out a trailer with a bit of gameplay to promote Nine Sols’ crowdfunding campaign. It’s got a banging electronic soundtrack, too. You can check that out below.

You play as Yi in Nine Sols, a long-forgotten hero from the past, who’s been woken from their slumber by a human child. It’s not clear why yet, but Yi’s on a quest to get revenge. You'll have to learn Nine Sols' unique combat system of deflection and close-range encounters to make it to the end. I'm guessing that's where Sekiro influence comes in, although there are also expected platforming mainstays, like a dash and a double jump. The FAQ on Nine Sols’ crowdfunding page says it’s purely single-player, aiming for 10-15 hours of playtime, with a planned release somewhere between April to June 2023.

Red Candle says their reason behind crowdfunding is to get feedback directly from the people buying and playing their games. “Nine Sols is far larger