The Japanese indie publisher Dangen Entertainment and developer LABS Works have just announced a new 8-bit-inspired action adventure called Lovish, which will be released for PC (via Steam) next year.
The adorable retro-style game is the second collaboration between LABS Works' founder Matt Kap and DANGEN Entertainment, following 2021's Astalon: Tears of the Earth, and is focused on the love-struck Sir Solomon on a quest to save his beloved from the Devil Lord’s castle. It features some truly gorgeous pixel art and character designs as well as a 20+ chiptune soundtrack composed by Kap, which calls to mind the classic NES games like Mega Man and Castlevania, as well as "neo-retro" titles like Shovel Knight.
In the game, players will embark on an epic adventure across 50+ rooms as Solomon, which are presented as platforming stages, collecting various weapons and items to improve their odds of survival. Unlike other platformers of this nature, though, every so often players will occasionally encounter a brief randomized event to add a little hilarity to proceedings, from escaping boulders to being incinerated or getting hit with an unexpected income tax notice.
Here's a list of some of its features, from the game's publisher:
-50+ fun levels to play through, each with multiple objectives!
-Wacky randomized event scenes between levels with hundreds of outcomes! You never know what you're gonna see next!
-Collect a variety of items to upgrade Solomon's abilities, or expand the game in meaningful (and unmeaningful) ways!
-Spend your pennies (in-game currency to be clear, no microtransactions here) in the in-game shop!
-100+ characters, some of which were designed by world-famous manga artist Ryusuke Mita (Dragon Half)
-An exciting, 20+ tune soundtrack by Matt Kap (Castle In The Darkness, Astalon: Tears of the Earth)
-Beautiful human-artist-made pixel art! Even the in-game AI art is drawn by a human person!
-More secrets than ever before! (But this is the first game in this series, so that doesn’t mean much, I guess.)
-Unexpected guest characters!
Lovish is currently available to wishlist on Steam and also has a demo available for you to try out ahead of its launch next year in Q1 2025.
You can check out its trailer below: