The Guise is a beautifully animated 2D metroidvania where you venture out into a dark fantasy world in search of a cure after accidentally turning yourself into a monster.
In The Guise you are an ordinary orphan boy who lives at a kid’s shelter with a couple of other kids and a mysterious caretaker. However, after venturing into your caretaker’s room after she mistakenly left it unlocked, you find a strange mask which turns you into a weird looking little monster. Changing back to your normal form isn’t going to be as easy as just removing the mask, so you’ll now have to venture out into the dangerous dark fantasy world in search of a cure (and you’ll hopefully learn a lesson about not sneaking into rooms and trying on strange masks in the process too!)
The Guise’s demo build features a sizeable chunk of the game world to explore and takes around 30 minutes to play through. The artwork is superb and the setting is interesting, but at the moment the combat is a little dull and the structure of the game world is a little too basic – this is exemplified by the game’s several long linear sections that seem to serve no purpose other than to waste your time. The level design does open up a little towards the end of the demo, but even then it feels very linear for a metroidvania.
It is off to a promising start with it’s high quality artwork and interesting dark fantasy world, so if the devs manage to shake up the world structure a bit and introduce some more interesting combat (and enemies that require different tactics to defeat) then it could be an excellent game. Plus, it’s always fun to be the monster for a change!
Check Out a Gameplay Video Here
Download The Guise Alpha Demo Here (Steam)