Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption looks Soulsy and maybe also a bit Zelda-y
Fight for your soul
"Adam must face the incarnation of his greatest sins as he unlocks his memories and sacrifices to atone. But will Adam attain redemption or will he wallow in his past?"
Is this:
a) a description of the protagonist of boss battler Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption [official site]?
b) Adam Smith going through his chat history the morning after a pub trip?
Trick question because the answer is c) BOTH.
"Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption is set in a dark and forbidding realm with a twisted past and deep lore. Inspired by the Souls series, Shadow of the Colossus, and with a dash of anime styling Sinner promises to be a thrilling and challenging experience."
As someone who doesn't play Dark Souls I would say it looks very Soulsy - tough bosses and lots of forward rolls - and as someone who does likes weird organic growths in games I would say I like the stalks/tentacles at the 28 second mark. They pop up again later in the trailer in a bit which reminded me of the Dark Link section of Ocarina of Time. Actually a fair few of those enemies look Zelda-ish.
Apparently the dev team at the Dark Star studio includes "a former Ubisoft art director, a Blizzard technical artist, and a Konami senior programmer" although I can't see any info about who they are specifically or which games they worked on at their former studios so it's hard to tell much from that snippet of info.
There's a touch more about the game itself in the missive I was sent, though, so I'll pop it here for the curious among you:
"Adam, a fallen soldier on a quest to save his soul, will face eight abhorrent bosses, the first seven each based on one of the deadly sins. Before each clash, Adam must make a sacrifice to enter combat and choose a stat to level down. Each fight will be tougher than the last and force players to carefully choose their actions in battle, aided by a variety of unlockable weapons."
So a loose biblical theme and a level down mechanic which pops up in games every now and again, both on purpose (as with something like Farabel) and through players' self-imposed challenge runs in stuff like Dark Souls.
"The action is framed by a desolate afterlife in which Adam seeks to restore his memories and atone for his sins. How he interacts with each boss will ultimately decide his fate in one of multiple endings."
The press release pegs the release date for PC and console versions of the game for Q1 2018 whereas the publisher's website goes for Q2. Games usually take longer than everyone thinks so I'm going to assume Q2 - that's late spring, early summer in human chat.