Hello! We're attempting to blend two genres we don't think have been truly joined before and that is Souls-like and Collectathon.
Our game is called Mouseward https://store.steampowered.com/app/1188410/Mouseward/ , and in it you play as a mouse who has mysteriously been brought back to life by a fallen star. Like other collectathons, you collect shiny objects (coins, Fallen Stars) and the game shows you exactly how much there is to collect in an area. You can 100% every area before moving on if you're a completionist like me. There's NPCs with quests (that are much easier to follow than Dark Souls questlines), there's a skill tree (that you can re-spec for free whenever), and there are plenty of interesting encounters and enemies to overcome. Across the whole game you'll encounter, fight, (maybe even befriend??) creatures of all kinds: Rats, Badgers, Owls, Weasels, Bugs, Frogs, Squirrels, etc
Ours is a small core team of 4, and we made everything in our game ourselves. No genAI was used, and our level design is hand-crafted to be as engaging and delightful as possible. I'm the creative director and lead artist, and am currently doing all of the art and animation.
We are targeting a release at the end of 2027, and our Steam demo is coming in about a month so I'll probably be back here yelling about it then! #games