With Top Hat signing on, METAMORPHOSIS goes full time
luxan's pixel-art horror game sends a nun named Aria across a dead world toward absolution
Earlier this year, METAMORPHOSIS got the announcement that changes a project's material reality: Top Hat Studios will publish the pixel-art horror game, and the deal funds animator Chancellor Stokes to work on it full time. The news landed in April during Top Hat's Spring Showcase, by way of a trailer posted from the team's art account that did not hide what full-time funding means to a small team.
The dead world of METAMORPHOSIS. The full announce trailer with sound is on Steam.
The game follows Aria, a nun branded a sinner, descending through the megastructures of a world that manufactured its own rapture, armed with firearms and miracles. The detail that got me is not wasconfession as a game system. Divine machines are still running in the ruins, you can confess your sins to them, and the store page warns that you should mind who might be listening. Horror keeps borrowing religion's set dressing; a game built around liturgy as interface is chasing something Blasphemous only gestured at.
Aria, the megastructures, and a sigil, from the METAMORPHOSIS announce trailer, via Steam
Confession, with something listening.
There is no release date. What exists now is a free Steam demo with three weapons, 15 enemies, two bosses, 30 items, and 28 songs, a soundtrack-to-content ratio that tells you where this team's heart is. Wishlist it, play the demo, and light a candle for the full run.
METAMORPHOSIS (images: luxan / Top Hat Studios, via Steam)
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