WayForward, the respected video game developer most famous for the Shantae series, has revealed a trailer for their upcoming video game, The Mummy Demastered. In a world of HD collections, 4K upscaling and high dynamic range gaming, this 2D action platformer is out to prove that a hand-crafted pixel art style can be worthy of the multi-million dollar kick starter to the Dark Universe. If there’s anything scarier than reanimated corpses, it’s not hitting projected sales targets.
Loosely based on the namesake film, the player will control an anonymous Prodigium agent, battling through the monsters of Princess Ahmanet, the film’s main antagonist. If the player dies at any point, they may continue as a new agent as many times as they like. However, the agent that just died also respawns, now controlled by Ahmanet, and possessing all the skills and upgrades the player had upon their death. It’s a system comparable to ZombiU, where death means more than simply dying. Retrieve your weapons? Or wait, until a familiar faced decomposing agent appears, showing how it feels to look down the barrel of your own gun. Mind warped, fingers decaying, with skin more rotten than the tomatoes score for the film itself.
Taking inspiration from the usual sources you would expect, The Mummy Demastered will be like Metroid meets Castlevania meets Contra meets the worst outcome for reincarnation theory. But, as they’ve proved with the Shantae series, WayForward have a way of wrapping a jaunty yet comprehensive platformer around charmingly delicate sprite animation. The Mummy Demastered is set to rise on PlayStation 4, Steam, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One in fall 2017.