La-Mulana 2 announced, original given 80% price cut to celebrate

Before indie was Indie there was La-Mulana, a terrifically challenging free platformer inspired by ye MSX games of yore. It was recently updated and put back on PC, Spelunky style - in fact, it's currently 80% off on Steam , if you've waited this long to brave its trap-filled ancient temple for yourself. The idea of a sequel had never even entered my mind, but I'm hardly going to turn my nose up at the recently announced La-Mulana 2 . This belated follow-up will star the original hero's daughter, and may be less perplexing than its occasionally obtuse predecessor.

There's not much to go on over on the official site, but IndieGames were able to play the game at TGS. From them we learn that developers Nigoro are aiming to make this sequel a wee bit more approachable, for instance by panning the camera in the direction of activated switches, so you'll have some clue how your actions are affecting the world. Despite that, the game will still be rather brutally difficult, as revealed in an interview with USGamer - who also have the first screenshots of the game.

"The difficult gameplay in retro games, I want to keep that," Nigoro's Takumi Naramura said in the interview, "and keep that kind of fun – you grind away at your game, and once you're able to clear something, you feel a real sense of satisfaction. I want to keep that feeling. I'm not going to get rid of that. But we're thinking about how to evolve other parts of the game."

It's early days for the game; the only thing set in stone is the protagonist, who will pick up the mantle (and by mantle I mean whip) from her father. We'll doubtless hear more over the coming months, but for now - woo-hoo - more La-Mulana is on the way.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.