The Night Wanderer is a sci-fantasy Soulslike that blends sword-fighting with cybernetics
Polish developers Mighty Koi have announced The Night Wanderer, a new sci-fantasy Soulslike RPG with metroidvania level design – yes, yes, tick those genre boxes! - in which you are a grim bearded swordsman exploring an alien world that looks a bit like pre-industrial Scandinavia.
Said grim bearded swordsman is Vuko Drakkainen, an elite mercenary embarked on a solo mission to Midgaard, "a planet inhabited by beings remarkably reminiscent of the people of our Early Middle Ages". Plot-thickening detected. Midgaard is surrounded by a radiation field that distorts and damages advanced technology – hence the crashlanding of your drop-pod, and hence you having to fight things with a blade, like some kind of caveman.
You are, at least, accompanied by one of gaming’s many baby-faced female AIs, Cyphral, who is wired directly into your nervous system and is able to "greatly increase your strength, reflexes, and endurance" – the basis for a level-up system, I’m guessing. Enemies shown so far include gangly little freaks with stuff growing out of their backs, and some kind of big Shelob-looking asshole with the head of a Mindflayer.
The game is based on Jarosław Grzędowicz’s book series "Lord of the Ice Garden". Polish videogame developers in general have a pretty great track record for adapting sci-fi or fantasy stories from other media, and this certainly has atmosphere, though I can’t say I’m jumping at the chance to play another moody bloke with a blade. Here are some concept artworks of the title character and a few locations.
Formed in 2022, Mighty Koi number about 100 people, and are based in Warsaw and Lublin. The Night Wanderer is one of two things they have in the can. The other is an adaptation of Thorgal, a comic series created by Grzegorz Rosiński and Jean Van Hamme. Neither game has a release date yet.
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