There’s something so enticing about The Lands Between. As someone who isn’t a soulslike person, I found myself wrapped up in the Shadow of the Erdtree hype, and finally took FromSoftware’s magnum opus out for a spin myself. I immediately feel in love with its twisted, medieval art style, and while the soulslike combat still isn’t really my thing, I spent hours exploring its sprawling universe, fighting those absolutely horrific Fingercreepeers and hating every minute of it. Ayasa: Shadows of Silence‘s world feels somewhat similar, blending a mix of traditional fantasy vistas with eerie, Little Nightmares-style themes. For me, it was an immediate wishlist based purely on its aesthetic alone.
You are Ayasa. Your home, the Inverted World, was once a place where darkness and light balanced each other perfectly, presided over by Tas the Absolute. But those days are gone, and in Ayasa: Shadows of Silence, your job is to inject some goodness into a realm gone mad.
The Inverted World is made up of six distinct segments: Betrayal, Faith, Greed, Hope, Indifference, and Love, each with their own unique theme. In one scene from the platform game‘s trailer, what appears to be a high-rise cityscape nestled at the heart of a decaying forest is decimated by an atomic bomb. In the next, we see a Mayan-style temple, then what appears to be a huge industrial facility. It’s a bizarre mashup of ideas that immediately have my attention.
The gameplay itself functions like most platformers, with a focus on taking down enemies with various abilities and solving your way through a series of fiendish puzzles. Ayasa can manipulate time itself, turn herself invisible, and utilize her own magic to either best her foes, or stealth through highly-populated areas.
You’ll also need to use light and shadow to your advantage, cloaking yourself in darkness to avoid foes, while following the light down strange new pathways.
There’ll no doubt be various boss battles, too – most likely popping up when you have to free each realm from the entity that’s corrupting it. In the industrial sequence we see a huge, hulking creature appearing to feed off of the factory’s noxious fumes, so no doubt we’ll have to either get up close and personal with him, or disrupt his plans on the sly.
While there are no exact details yet, the Ayasa: Shadows of Silence release date is set for 2025. It’ll be available on Steam and Epic, and you can wishlist it on the former right here.
If you’re looking for some equally eerie haunts to darken your winter nights, we have a list of all the best horror games. Alternatively, we’ve got a list of all the upcoming PC games for 2024 and beyond if you’re planning out your next year of gaming.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.