“Sealed Bite” by securas, Raindrinker & Fabien Merten.
“A short platformer. […] What sort of trouble can you get into in the forest?”
I am not sure what I admire the most about “Sealed Bite”. Is it the wonderful pixel art, the excellent ambient music and sound, the greatly implemented level design or the subtly changing gameplay feeling thanks to the progressively unlockable abilities? I have no clue. But the combination of all these things created a fantastic metroidvania platformer with a well executed concept.
You play as a cloaked figure, going into the woods. Suddenly, you get bitten by a werewolf; that is what the protective spirit of the forest tells you after the attack. The spirit knows that you will turn into a gruesome creature, but luckily it knows a way for you to come out of this trouble: You have to collect the three powerful crystal shards, which are hidden in the depths of this mysterious place. Whenever you gather one of them, your body will go through a change, allowing you to gather an additional skill like climbing, double jumping or pushing big obstacles away.
While these abilities are common in nearly any puzzle platformer or metroidvania, “Sealed Bite” offers a stunning, juicy feedback. It just feels massively polished in any direction and that is a highly admirable achievement to reach within such a short time. Especially the fighting style of the player’s character did a major contribution to that. Whenever an enemy is in your range, you can nearly stop the time and do a quick attack on it, but this will also put you into the same space of the now killed monster. Thereby, attacks are not just a fighting skill, but also an important part of the movement, which absolutely amazed me. [PLAY]
