Action-platformer Valfaris gets release date

Valfaris, the heavy metal action-platformer in space that was shown off at this year's PC Gaming Show, has been stamped with a October 10 release date.

The new trailer, above, is a lot like the one we saw in June, but it's reminded me just how impressive the weapons look. As rocker/warrior Therion, you're tasked with ridding a hulking space citadel of its demonic inhabitants by way of flamethrowers, laser beams, shotguns, rocket launchers, energy swords, satanic tentacles, a gun that shoots gold skulls and something called the Envoy of Destruction, which is immediately the one I want to use most.

You'll strike ever-deeper into the citadel, beating grunts and bosses alike. Those boss battles look like the centerpieces of the game: the trailer shows some of the big bads, such as a towering figure in black armor with fire coming out of its hands, and a floating eye surrounded by other, smaller eyes.

I'm also impressed with how much detail the team at Steel Mantis have got out of the pixel art. Every monster explodes in a shower of gibs, and projectiles buzz with energy and blue lightning.

It's developed by the same team as Slain: Back from Hell, an action-platformer from 2016 that has 'mostly positive' reviews on Steam.

Valfaris will be out on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.