Headup Games and Merge Games today announced the release of Onikira: Demon Killer for PC. Onikira will launch on Steam Early Access on Friday 14th November priced $9.99, £6.99 or €9.99.

As the press release reads, in Early Access players will be able to experience the first two levels of the game using all four weapons, over 50 moves, five challenging enemies and an epic boss battle.

Developed by Digital Furnace Games, Onikira: Demon Killer is a 2D side-scrolling beat ‘em up set in a fantasy feudal Japan. The player takes on the role of Yamazaki Jiro, a samurai fighting to prevent the forces of the Japanese underworld, Yomi, from breaking through into the world of the living.
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Onikira: Demon Killer takes the deep fighting mechanics of traditional 3D beat ‘em ups and merges them with classic 2D platformer mechanics.

“Every level is crammed full of environmental aids to help the player in combat encounters e.g. massive swinging bell gongs to launch your enemies into, explosive jets of lava, collapsible buildings, spikes pits, explosive barrels and more.”

Here are the game’s key features for its final version:

Unique high-level combat – Onikira mixes 2D platform game elements into the combat system to make something special. Moving platforms, wall jumping, wall running and grappling all serve to make for dynamic and emergent combat encounters.

Eight Levels – the narrative unfolds over highly polished and gorgeous hand-painted levels featuring rain drenched villages, destroyed opulent cities, mountaintop locations and an erupting volcano.
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Master unique weapons – Each weapon – sword, tetsubo, naginata or arm blades – has multiple unlockable moves which can result in massive combo chains when moves are strung together. Combo chains turn directly into score multipliers.
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Responsive and Expressive Combat System – players are rewarded for strategic and skill-based fighting. Play flows naturally from move to move, allowing the player to create new combos that haven’t been designed explicitly by the developers.

Soul Shop – souls are the currency of Onikira. Use them to revive your health and trade them. At certain points inside each level, the player will find rifts into Yomi where benevolent spirits will trade moves for collected souls.
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Challenge Arenas – players complete combat related challenges and improve their score and skill to gain achievements. The arenas are fully integrated into Steam’s online leaderboards.
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Specific enemy types – with their own unique vulnerabilities, every enemy emphasises a particular fighting style, like a floating, possessed Mempo mask that encourages the use of air game or a monstrously twisted high-ranking samurai, where hit and run tactics are the best way to stay alive.

Enjoy!

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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