Spirits of Baciu: The Deception to materialize in 2024

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Free standalone prologue to hand-drawn dark fantasy puzzle adventure available for download

Late last year, indie two-person Italian developer Horns Level Up offered a free prologue for their upcoming dark fantasy adventure. Now comes word that the full version of Spirits of Baciu will be released sometime in 2024, with a Kickstarter in between to help get it to the finish line.

Players control the "The Lost One, a cat-like spirit" who awakens in the middle of the Hoia Baciu Forest, a "paranormal hotspot where strange things happen," with no memory of when or how it got there. To find out what's going on, you must explore the woods, interact with the environment, solve puzzles and talk to fellow spirits and other forest inhabitants you meet along the way.

Inspired by the developers' love of "old-school games and dreamlike adventures, puzzles and forests," not to mention the artist's own cat, Spirits of Baciu is a 2D point-and-click adventure with something of an Amanita vibe, with its lovely hand-drawn graphics, organic settings and surreal atmosphere. Described as an "enigmatic adventure puzzle game," there will also be some light platforming elements sprinkled throughout, but the gameplay will consist largely of solving puzzles by paying attention not only with your eyes but your ears as well, as listening to "the sounds of the forest ... may prove crucial."

The full version of Spirits of Baciu, subtitled The Deception, will be released on Windows PC sometime next year, but to make that happen, the developers are planning a Kickstarter campaign that will help finance the remaining production. While you wait, the prologue is still available to download on Steam (exclusively for Windows) or itch.io (for Mac and Linux as well), offering an introductory chapter that is "independent from the full game."

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