Cut to Bits, the studio founded by former GTA 4 and BioShock Infinite devs, announced their debut project: Venture to the Vile, and it looks like quite the ambitious indie game. Venture to the Vile weaves strands of metroidvania, adventure games, platformer, and action, with a touch of dark fantasy and a lovely art direction.
The once-peaceful burg of Rainybrook wakes up to chaos and destruction one day, as monsters the citizens dubbed “the Vile” appear as if from nowhere and begin ransacking the city. You and your friend Luella are caught in the Vile’s initial onslaught. Luella vanishes, but you escape with some minor alterations – minor as in “your arm is a claw and you can absorb the Vile now.”
There’s zipwire puzzles, battles against giant bosses, and tense platforming segments as a massive monster slowly devours the entire stage.
While Venture to the Vile might look like a traditional 2D side-scroller at first, Cut to Bits is implementing some open-world design philosophy as well. The team says if you can see a location, you can reach it, whether that’s through clever jumps or taking advantage of how the game splits its setting into a foreground and background, not unlike Paper Mario.
Cut to Bits doesn’t have an anticipated release date for Venture to the Vile yet, but you can add it to your Steam wishlist now.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
