PAX East 2022: Lucid Crosses Celeste With Metroidvania Mechanics

gamespot.com:

Apogee's rebranding has been a kind of return to form for the decades-old publisher. Its roots are in fast-paced games and it's continuing to work with developers making fast-paced games. Turbo Overkill, a game that looks at Doom Eternal and says, «that's too slow» proves that much. The company's selection of games at PAX East 2022 is very much in that same vein, save for one that it decided to keep secret. That game is Lucid, a platformer being developed by one man, Eric Manahan, and it's a far cry from the other games Apogee is showing off.

Instead of a shooter accompanied by pumped-up music meant to send players into some kind of blood rage, Lucid opts for a calmer approach. It pulls the same chill vibes from Celeste, as well as that game's movement, all while throwing players into the middle of a Metroidvania-like map.

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Now Playing: Lucid — Official Teaser Trailer

To be clear though, I wasn't able to actually play Lucid. The game, which Eric has been developing for just a year and a half, wasn't exactly safe for consumers to play. «So I was asked to come to PAX East very last-minute by Apogee. I was woefully unprepared because I pretty much tore apart the game, I was fixing some stuff, so I thought nothing of it. Then I got here and by midday, someone asked me, 'hey do you have a build?' and I had to make one. I scrambled, I put one together, I tied some rooms together and that's how I was able to show it.»

The gameplay of Lucid I was able to see clearly had a lot of DNA borrowed from Celeste. The rooms