Palworld devs' next game is a base-building Dead Cells and Hollow Knight mash-up

rockpapershotgun.com:

When I first saw Never Grave: The Witch And The Curse rising up the Steam Next Fest charts at the end of last week, I thought, "Oh! That's a neat Hollow Knight-looking Metroivanida roguelike, I'll definitely give that a go." And having played its demo over the weekend, I can confirm: it's certainly an intriguing little thing that I'll be keen to keep an eye on when it launches into early access, possibly sometime next month.

The biggest surprise was that, despite its very Hollow Knight-looking visuals, it actually plays more like Dead Cells in practice. Instead of being a sentient lump of flesh able to inhabit infinite bodies, you're a magical witch's hat that can possess, discard and rematerialise your chosen sack of limbs at the touch of a button. The second thing that surprised me was that it also has quite a substantial base/village building aspect to it on the side, and the third - well, perhaps this isn't so much of a surprise given everything I've just said, because it also turns out this is the next game from Palworld developers Pocketpair. Yep, it all makes a bit more sense now.

Before you all groan inwardly at the thought of indulging another Pocketpair game, I must stress again that Never Grave is actually pretty all right. Its hack and slash combat feels good in the hands, and navigating its proc gen hallways with your limited health and pool of growing abilities creates that same kind of nervous trepidaton as setting out on a new Dead Cells run. The demo isn't flush with tons of weapon types and stat buffs, admittedly, but it does bring a few interesting things of its own to the table to give it a bit more personality than just another Dead Cells/Hollow Knight clone.

The first is that cursed hat, which you can control independently of the very Bravely Default-esque witch girl you play as for most of the demo. Technically, the girl appears to be little more than an empty vessel, as when you jump off her head, she'll crumble to the ground like a limp