Metroidvania action RPG Skautfold: Usurper heading to Switch

Red Art Games, in partnership with Pugware, announced today that it’s bringing Skautfold: Usurper to Switch. A release is planned for June 23, 2023.

Skautfold: Usurper will initially launch digitally, with a physical version to follow in September. Additionally, the Skautold: Bloody Pack featuring both Skautfold: Shrouded in Sanity and Skautfold: Usurper on a single cart will be available on September 1.

Pre-orders for the PEGI-rated physical editions of all three titles will open at 5PM CEST on May 5, 2023 on the official Red Art Games online store. Those who pre-order Skautfold: Usurper’s physical version directly from Red Art Games will receive its exclusive Deluxe Edition which has a sleeve and a double-sided poster as well as an exclusive keychain featuring the game’s main character as a pre-order bonus. Those who reserve the Skautfold: Bloody Pack from the online store will also receive its exclusive Deluxe Edition which features a sleeve and a double-sided poster and get two keychains featuring both Skautfold’s protagonists as pre-order bonuses.

The North American, ESRB-rated boxed copies of Skautfold: Usurper, the Skautfold: Bloody Pack, and Skautfold: Shrouded in Sanity will retail for $24.99, $39.99 and $19.99 respectively. Video Games Plus (VGP), Red Art Games’ North American partner, will handle distribution. Pre-orders start on May 5 on VGP’s site at 5 PM CEST.

Here’s an overview of Skautfold: Usurper:

Usurper is a sequel to Shrouded in Sanity, however, knowledge of the first game is not necessary, it is the second part of the Skautfold game series.

Usurper is a Metroidvania Action-RPG. With Eldritch horrors having been unleashed by the outer-worldly Citadel, your job is to rid London of its terrors. Use the new “Guard” system that rewards skillful play and accuracy, to uncover the massive structure and defeat the nightmares lurking within.

Usurper’s battle system is built around “Guard”; a system that allows the player to charge through attacks and take risks, rewarding accurate timing and risk assesment. Instead of immediately losing health when the player is hit, they will loose “Guard points” (which function like a regeneration shield). When these run out, the player will take damage normally. However, if the player accurately dodges through incoming attacks, they will turn a large portion of that attack damage into “Guard points”, which allows you to turn the tide of the fight, and gain the upper hand. This is a system that will allow anyone to get into the game, yet still provide a high skill ceiling for those players looking for a challenge.

Players can also take advantage of a reflective shield; capable of turning most enemy projectiles into “friendly” ones, so you can strike back with the enemy’s own weapons. While this will not regenerate Guard, it will still negate attacks at a lesser Guard cost.

With eight different stats to spec into (along with stat reallocation), countless varieties of character builds are possible. Usurper also features over 90 different weapons and spells; from swords, spears, axes, great swords, sycthes, whips, katanas, rapiers, daggers, bows, guns, rifles, canons, spells and summons.

If you’re looking for even more content, then there are innumerable secrets, additional areas and optional bosses to discover. Or perhaps you’d rather set your own difficulty by activating special conditions such as; no-guard mode, 1 HP mode, perma-death, or a built-in speedrunning mode.

However you choose to play, The Citadel is a massive and versatile interconnected world. There are countless shortcuts to uncover, and a variety of diverse areas; from human towns to alien landscapes, grand libraries to ethereal gardens, and from an Eldritch engine to a crashed spaceship.

Usurper takes place in an alternative timeline of 1898 in London. The outer worldly Citadel has landed in the city causing massive panic and releasing the maddening Fog. Recently re-crowned Empress Eleanor has assembled the royal forces and her four most loyal Knights to enter the Citadel – in the hopes of learning more, and hopefully finding a way to rid London of this terror. Meanwhile, Waltham, the leader of the Veimar, uses his own forces to ascend the Citadel and challenge the Navigator for his own…purposes…

Get a look at a trailer for Skautfold: Usurper below.