Devolver Digital has released an extended gameplay look at Trek to Yomi, an upcoming game from developers Leonard Menchiari and Flying Wild Hog.
That gameplay can be watched in the video embedded below which gives us a 15 minute snippet of the title.
“As a vow to his dying Master, the young swordsman Hiroki is sworn to protect his town and the people he loves against all threats. Faced with tragedy and bound to duty, the lone samurai must voyage beyond life and death to confront himself and decide his path forward,” reads the description attached to the video.
For those who haven’t seen the game before, Trek to Yomi seems to be as close as we’re ever going to get to a playable Kurosawa movie which is reflected in the fact that this game is entirely in black and white.
In the gameplay we see Hiroki going through many beautiful environments including a forest, mine and village, all under siege from bandits who need to be put down.
This is a 2.5D game that has a lot of texture to it with the player able to interact with a lot of the world in the foreground and background.
Everything, of course, looks amazing here. It really goes to show how a strong art direction can make a smaller title look impeccable. If you squint you can see that this is a lower budget indie title using 3D models that aren’t that special on their own, but the black and white combined with an overall impressive presentation elevates things.
Combat looks to be a chunky affair with enemies dying after just a few sword swipes and decapitations aplenty, but we’re just a bit confused by the apparent lack of enemy variety on display.
We know that “spearmen, archers, riflemen, and even beings believed to be nothing more than folk tale” are part of this game, but we see none of them here.
In the entire 15 minutes we only see rather vanilla enemies, all armed with swords and nothing else.
The video ends with what looks like a boss battle against an enemy wielding a polearm backed up by grunts with bows and arrows, but as it cuts off before this fight we don’t get to see how that will work.
Hopefully this lack of variety is intentionally kept out of this video and the interesting enemies are being saved for the full release.
That release is happening soon with Trek to Yomi launching on 5th May for every major platform except the Nintendo Switch. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S will all get access in just under a month.
While we never encourage pre-orders, buying the game before 9th May will net you a 10 percent discount, though do remember that this is a launch title on Game Pass, so subscribers can play it without spending anything extra.
