The Hollow Knight Inspiration Is Blatant in Promising PS5 Metroidvania Karma Exorcist

Karma Exorcist is a newly announced Metroidvania from a new studio named Cyclos, and it already looks pretty good.

The game's based around Chinese mythology, and has you journey through the world of the dead, where a karmic imbalance is causing chaos. Your typical everyday problem, then.

After giving its reveal trailer a watch, we can't help but think there's a lot of Hollow Knight DNA in here.

Obviously they're both 2D, side-scrolling Metroidvanias, but it's in the way that combat seems to flow, and each attack has a satisfying thunk to it. Even the animation style is quite similar, right down to the staggered hit effect that occurs when the protagonist takes damage.

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If you're interested, you can catch over nine minutes of gameplay footage below, courtesy of Japanese publication 4Gamer.

It's all looking rather slick and responsive though, isn't it? Cyclos says the title's "in the later stretch of the production phase", so it might not be too long until we hear about a potential release window.

Karma Exorcist is currently offering a limited playtest on Steam, although the developer does stress that the demo build is unfinished, and may suffer from some bugginess.

What are your first impressions of Karma Exorcist? Farm some good karma in the comments section below.