A new trailer for this 'embroidered medieval platformer' shows off the sprawling underworld buried under its sunny village

Scarlet Deer Inn is a game with a unique art style: all of its 2D sprite characters have been sourced from real-world embroidery. Most of its previews so far have focused on the game's sunny, bucolic overworld, but its latest trailer shows off a little bit more of the extensive catacombs featured in the game.

Up topside, Scarlet Deer Inn reminds me a lot of Pentiment with its side-scrolling exploration of a peaceful, sunny village, but this game invokes traditional handcrafts for its artstyle as opposed to illuminated manuscripts.

On top of the painterly backgrounds, every character in the game has had their animation frames embroidered by co-creator Eva Navratilova before getting scanned into the game, resulting in an artstyle that reminds me of classic Disney animation, but with every character having this rich, shifting texture from the needlework.

Below the town, protagonist Elise has to rely on a torch both to see where she's going and to solve puzzles, and that underground world looks much more extensive than I'd initially assumed. I was particularly struck by a platforming set piece where Elise has to navigate razor sharp spikes both above and below⁠—it looks like something out of Hollow Knight. I was also struck by a scene partway through the trailer where Elise encounters a cavernous vault lit by thousands of candles.

Scarlet Deer Inn currently has no set release date, but you can wishlist the game on Steam and follow developer Attu Games on Twitter for development updates.

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Embroidered sprite sheets for Scarlet Deer Inn — (Image credit: Attu Games)

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.