Update [Mon 16th Oct, 2023 09:45 BST]: As spotted by AlphaBetaGamer, a free demo is now available for Asura The Striker as part of Steam Next Fest.
The demo features four levels, each containing countless waves of enemies and one final climactic boss fight that appears at the end of every stage. You can download it here.
In other news, something we appeared to have missed since we last wrote about the game is that its release date has now been moved back to 2024 (as indicated by its Steam page). Sadly, there's still no exact date yet on when it will arrive, but we'll keep a close eye on updates as they become available.
Original Story [Wed 26th Apr, 2023 12:05 BST]: It's not every day that a new Space Harrier-inspired rail shooter crosses our radar, so when one does it's typically a good reason to get excited. And that's precisely what we did earlier today when we came across this incredible post from the Japanese website Game's Talk with a video of studio LeftOver's upcoming Steam game Asura The Striker.
The video shows the game's female protagonist, a humanoid battle robot named Asuka, fighting off a swarm of enemy aliens and robots while travelling across a set of picturesque environments like deserts, meadows, and vast stretches of ocean. Like Space Harrier, the game is presented from a third-person perspective, but instead of featuring pixel art and sprite-scaling, it instead uses 3D models similar to the approach taken in the PS2 Space Harrier remake and Yu Suzuki's 2022 Apple Arcade game Air Twister.
The game is coming to Steam later this year, but thanks to Game's Talk's post, it already seems to have attracted quite a lot of attention online, with many expressing their excitement and wanting to know more about the title.
Unfortunately, there's not much other information to share at this point, with the developers instead letting videos and gifs do most of the talking. But if you want to, you can currently wishlist the game to keep up to date with when it releases.