Devotion studio's next game looks like Hollow Knight crossed with Sekiro

Nine Sols is the next game from Devotion studio Red Candle Games, and it's a bit of a departure for the Taiwanese team. Whereas Devotion and its predecessor Detention were both spooky survival horror games, Nine Sols is a 2D platformer "featuring Sekiro-inspired deflection focused combat." The studio describes the setting as "Taopunk".

The trailer above shows the first substantial gameplay footage of Nine Sols. It looks really impressive, mixing the fluid 2D movement of Hollow Knight with what definitely looks like a more complex approach to combat. Red Candle has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help finish the project, which still doesn't have a release window.

The crowdfunding tiers are typical: around $20 gets you a digital copy of the game, though the highest tier—which asks for over $1,000—is sold out and included an invitation to "co-write a short in-game story", among other things. The campaign has already well exceeded its NT$3,000,000 (around $105,000) goal with 48 days spare, so it's clearly piqued a lot of people's interest.

The interest is unsurprising. Devotion is a brilliantly atmospheric horror game, but its profile was also boosted by its release history. The game was removed from sale weeks after its initial 2019 launch due to an unfavourable reference to China's president. This depiction led to a heavy review bombing from Chinese users, but more consequentially, resulted in the game's Chinese publisher having its business license revoked. It took two years, but Devotion is available to buy direct from Red Candle.