Final Form looks more Metroid than anything Nintendo's done recently

Reikon Games, the Polish development studio behind Ruiner, today announced their next project: Final Form. The bumpf says that this is a working title, presumably because the studio's still wondering if it can get away with calling it Netroid Prime.

Yes, Final Form looks great, and it also looks like someone over there really loves the 3D Metroid games: a major element of combat is that the player character literally turns into a morph ball.

And this is not a problem! The Metroid Prime games are amazing (hell, I even liked Other M), and one of the omnipresent frustrations of the Nintendo fan is that I'll never get out my Wii again to play through the Prime trilogy. And Final Form does have its own ideas beyond the obvious inspiration: it's also notably faster-paced and more combat-oriented, though of course a hype trailer is always going to emphasise the flashy stuff.

The game casts players as "a humanoid avatar of a sentient spaceship. The mission expands beyond the edge of the known Universe, in a race against an unstoppable plague, to protect the last celestial being, essence of life and creation."

"Making this game is like coming back to our roots,"  said Reikon Games' co-founder Magdalena Tomkowicz. "Final Form has been brewing and growing for a long time, inspired by our passion for exploring the unknown and nourished by works of art that contemplate possible futures of mankind, the civilization we call our own and whatever might lie beyond.

We’re looking forward to revealing more of FF, its blood-pumping movement and combat, breath-taking environments and haunting universe. The main focus of our work is the soul of the game."

And, presumably, hoping Nintendo's lawyers aren't feeling frisky. I jest of course. With Metroid Prime 4 still a ways off after its development was rebooted, this may well having a chance of filling the Samus-shaped hole in my heart.