Image: ChillyRoom & Spiral Up Games

Sometimes you can identify a game's biggest inspirations within seconds of putting hands on a controller. It's clear that prolific Chinese indie outfit ChillyRoom has been playing a lot of Sekiro, as parrying long chains of attacks is the heart and soul of ReBlade: The Death Spiral, at least judging by the Next Fest demo that went up the other day. Another thing obvious to anyone with eyeballs is that this is an exceptionally pretty game, for the most part, although some of the UI bits could do with a bit more style.

The demo goes light on the story, high on the action. You're an android lady (with transparent 'flesh' and a scandalously visible robo-skeleton), waking up in a trash heap on a mission to ascend to the top of a Chinese mythology-themed cyberpunk abyss and beat up the big cyber-demon-lord sitting on his throne at the top. Every time you die, you get punted down to the bottom to try again. So far, so samsara, with a dash of Hades.

As with Sekiro, the best offence is a good defense. Parrying enemies can stun them to set them up for an instant kill finish, but attacks are color-coded. Yellow attacks (both melee and ranged) can be parried, while red attacks have to be dodged then countered. Regular blocking drains weapon power, which is gained by hitting with basic combo strings, and consumed by projectile or heavy attacks. I also like that overhead projectile attacks like grenades can be kicked back at their owner if you get to the target location and hit the use button soon enough.

It can be quite a bit to keep up with as the demo has no problem throwing you into a fight with three different enemies at once, each with different attack types, and the high camera angle can sometimes make it hard to pick out everything you need to see. But I found it learnable, and once I hit my groove, I was having a great time, especially when challenging the mini-bosses of the demo. The bigger enemies tend to be easier to read from that high isometric perspective, and have a nice mix of attack strings (you'll sometimes be parrying 5+ times in a row) and area attacks to keep things fresh.

My only gripe is that the menus and text can feel a bit perfunctory. Like menus from a small indie production layered on top of high-end 3D graphics gloss. I'd love to see a bit more style applied to them before launch, but it doesn't get in the way of the combat, which feels like it has The Sauce. So far, at least.

As a studio, ChillyRoom has been throwing a lot at the wall to see what sticks. In the past few years, they've released old-school RTS games, platform roguelites, overhead dungeon crawls, turn-based tactical RPGs, and they've even co-developed a 2.5D extraction shooter. They were all decent, if not great, but it feels like ReBlade is a major step up budget-wise. While everything they've done previously was either chunky pixels or high-res sprites, this is a move to very detailed 3D, with a heavy focus on smoothly animated characters.

There's no release date yet on ReBlade: The Death Spiral, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't more than a few months off at this point. As seems to be their MO, ChillyRoom also has a few other irons in the fire, with the similarly stylish action-RPG Loulan: The Cursed Sand on the horizon too, where you play as a skeleton (wrapped in sand instead of clear plastic) battling more traditional Chinese demonic hordes.