‘Bookbound Brigade’ Is An Adorable Metroidvania Starring Literary Heroes Learned In School

Players who love the “Metroidvania” genre of games will find “Bookbound Brigade” a rather fresh and entertaining take on side-scrolling action adventure platformer games.

Intragames and Digital Tales have announced (via Gematsu) “Bookbound Brigade,” a new entry in the Metroidvania genre of games. Unlike titles such as “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,” “Timespinner” or the recently released “Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night,” this new title features a different kind of art and also has a different kind of gameplay.

“Bookbound Brigade” brings many historical and literary figures together in a quest to avenge the world for the theft of the so-called “Book of Books,” which, as the name implies, is “a volume encompassing every single work of fiction and non-fiction ever written.”

Unlike the other aforementioned titles, “Bookbound Brigade” lets players play as a whole group of characters “who move in formation and fight as one.” Each of these characters, which players likely “studied in school,” has specific traits and skills that will allow players to jump or fly through obstacles, break barriers, jump on walls, and defeat enemies.

These characters are very familiar and include the likes of Dracula, King Arthur, Queen Victoria, Nikola Tesla, Cassandra, Dorothy Gale, Sun Wukong the Monkey King, and Robin Hood. All of these will band together a la Avengers and, using their specific abilities, will have to face different monsters in the game’s huge colorful world. Watch the video below to get a better idea on how this works:

Worthy of the Metroidvania title?

As a Metroidvania title, “Bookbound Brigade” will get players running, jumping, exploring areas, fighting enemies, and backtracking over and over to grow their skills, solve puzzles, and finish challenging quests.

Intragames promises that the game will be visually entertaining as well. Straying away from the “pixel art dominating the Metroidvania genre,” this title will feature hand-drawn visuals inspired by book illustrations from different places in time. Indeed, looking at the screenshots reveal brighter and more vivid visuals compared to darker colors in games like “SotN” and “Timespinner.”

“Bookbound Brigade” will be released for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC this year. Intragames, however, didn’t give an exact release date. Stay tuned for more details.