How Crowsworn became our most anticipated Metroidvania?

We finally got around to playing the Crowsworn demo. This is the same demo that was sent out to backers of the Crowsworn Kickstarter, who backed minimum 55 dollars. Trying to talk about the demo without talking about Hollow Knight or the upcoming sequel, Silksong, would be nearly impossible.

Crowsworn and Hollow Knight: Silksong have been linked together for numerous reasons. They are both dark Metroidvanias. Mongoose Rodeo have listed Hollow Knight as a major inspiration along with Bloodborne and DMC. Matthew Griffin is the Director of marketing for both Team Cherry and Mongoose Rodeo. Finally, in the wait for Silksong, people have looked for something like Crowsworn to fill the void.

Having spent substantial time with the Crowsworn demo and dozens upon dozens in Hollow Knight, our conclusion is that Crowsworn is currently our most anticipated Metroidvania. This is likely an opinion that wont go over well with many, especially people who haven’t played any of Crowsworn, so we tried to determine why we felt that way outside of just a feeling and were able to narrow it down to a three reasons.

Before we jump into the why, if you are one of the nearly 20k people who backed Crowsworn and have played the demo, go to the comments on the video above and tell me what Metroidvania you are anticipating more and why.

One Persons Trash is Another Persons Demo

If you consider that this demo contains areas that didn’t make the final game, then you have to imagine that what remains in the game is pretty incredible. Mongoose Rodeo didn’t want to spoil the game, even if it was just the beginning or select sections of the game that most demos do. Playing the start of a game multiple times takes some of the charm and excitement away and that can carry over to your entire experience. However, these random scraps of Crowsworn didn’t work together well and felt disjointed. In the words of the developers “there was no soul behind the demo”

What Mongoose Rodeo did was take all of the cut content and create some newly designed areas to create something that felt like a more cohesive experience. The easier thing to do was just to stitch these rooms together and release it, but that wasn’t good enough. There are two things to take away from reading between the lines of the demo release. The first is that the standards of Mongoose Rodeo are extremely high and second, the level of quality of what didn’t make the game is very high. Both of these bode very well for the full release of Crowsworn.

Great Feel and Polish

The demo feels clean and highly polished. The sound of your feet as you dash thorough dark puddles, the way your shadow bounces of certain elements in the background with its parallax environments, how tight the controls feel, and how weighty the combat feels. Drawing from their Bloodborne inspiration, every single enemy is challenging. They react different every time and it’s just as easy to be overwhelmed very quickly from low level mobs.

As a reminder, none of this will be included in the final game and the demo is representative of the state of the game likely at least a year ahead of its release.

The demo ran perfectly on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, the demo hadn’t been optimized for Steam Deck controls, so you have to connect a KBM and then remap to Steam Deck, which is a bit cumbersome, but when you finally get it, it feels excellent and at home on Deck. Without a doubt, this game will be verified on Steam Deck at release based on our time with it and it also makes me wish that we had the OLED version for all the black contrasting areas to explode off the screen.

Tone

We are over the moon as excited about Hollow Knight: Silksong as most of you are too. We love Metroidvanias and it is one of the best. There is no doubt after playing the demo, that Crowsworn and Silksong will both have the juice. However, the tone of Crowsworn just resonates with us on a deeper level. It’s grungier, it’s more gothic, it’s more foreboding. The score of the game is constantly ominous and uneasy. It feels much more akin to dark experiences like Bloodborne and Darkest Dungeon. This is one that is harder to put into words, but it’s just a feeling that you have when experiencing the game.

ALREADY FIXING THE IMPERFECT

There were a few things that Mongoose Rodeo learned from the demo analytics. One of the things that seemed slightly off in the deep was that upon death you have to pay a good chunk of your currency to be resurrected. Mongoose have said that this was just a placeholder and you wont lose currency in the full game and you wont have to do a corpse run. The system that we have planned is a lot more unorthodox” The other issue was that people were dying a lot, which makes sense as their Bloodborne inspiration obviously goes beyond just thematically, but also in challenge. Mongoose Rodeo have also stated that it’s clear the game will require difficulty levels, which just brings more people in the door, while not affecting people that prefer the harder difficulty options.

2025 and Beyond

We are currently working on our Most Anticipated Indie games for 2025 and Crowsworn is easily in the top ten, the only concern is if it will release in 2025.