In the handsome metroidvania Alruna And The Necro-Industrialists you are a dryad fighting against the corpse of capitalism

Alruna And The Necro-Industrialists begins with quotes from TS Eliot’s The Wasteland and Mad Max: Fury Road. They’re influences that would normally get you kicked out of Creative Writing Club for being too fancy and predictable. But the game behind the motto looks pretty slick.

It’s “a compact, high-density Metroidvania, with a focus on breaking sequences and playing things out of order”. It uses a square aspect ratio calibrated to terrify wrinkled Game Boy enthusiasts, and features 200 single-screen rooms that “fit into the larger puzzle box of the world”. You also play as a thorn witch who looks a bit like ’50s Tinkerbell, with a hint of Betty Boop. Here’s a trailer.

And here’s some text:

Alruna is a dryad in a dying world – a spirit of life in the land of the dead. The earth has been drained. There is only The Sprawl. Poor, neglected skeleton men dot the Wasteland of the Necro-Industrialists, shuffling endlessly in a plodding mockery of life. But are they the real enemy? Or do the skeletons suffer as much as the dryads under the Necro-Industrialists’ rule?

And redemption? Is it possible? Dead people long for heaven. But the dead can only dig…

I just tried the Steam demo and it is a very surefire production. You get a chargeable jump, a dash move and a slide as standard, plus a choice of weapons and items plucked from the crevices of a world with four temples (plus a possible fifth “secret” temple, which isn’t so secret as they’ve called it on the Steam page).

The music is quite stylish and there are familiar puzzle layouts such as flipping switches to make certain platforms dematerialize while others become solid. Power-ups include exploding mushrooms, magic vines and electro plants. It’s quite packed, although the square room format makes everything feel quite tidy.

In addition to platform-puzzle gambits, we can expect hidden minigames, “a star-crossed enemies-become-lovers romance with a rival adventurer” and multiple story endings. It’s got a fairly unpolished anti-capitalist edge, without (so far) being didactic. One friendly character you encounter complains about “endless progress and infinite growth”. There’s certainly room for more Wasteland quotes here, but hopefully they’ll hold back.

The full game is out on September 26. Developers Neckbolt are also working on pocket-sized trick-or-treat platformer October Panic. Their previous releases include Yono And The Celestial Elephants, which Alec (RPS at peace) called “almost absurdly wholesome Zelda-esque,” corpse-girl adventure Belladona, which seems slightly less wholesome, and Molly Medusa: Queen Of Spit, where you can walk on walls and turn things to stone. A studio to watch, probably.

If you like the aesthetics and atmosphere here but can miss the combat, I recommend checking out Everdeep Aurora or maybe Void Stranger.