The Vanir Project and Badland Games recently announced a new game called Nightmare Boy. The game is inspired by 16 and 32-bit games from the golden age of gaming. The title sees players jumping, platforming, running and battling their way through various nightmare-themed levels as the protagonist faces off against iconic villains from pop-culture history.

Vanir Project’s lead programmer, Victor Avila, commented about what they’re aiming to achieve with the game, mentioning in the press release…

“In developing Nightmare Boy, we wanted to create a game that would be found right next to classic 16- and 32-bit platformers. We hope players will get a kick out of Nightmare Boy’s unique look, atmosphere, and story, while facing unspeakable, unstoppable horrors.”

The game sees players taking on the role of Nightmare Boy, who is left with the monumental task of saving the land after the world of nightmares, monsters and dreamers have bled together, resulting in an evil wizard capturing kids to fuel the nightmare world.

You can see what the gameplay looks like with the trailer below.

The game moves at blazing fast speeds. One of the things that Vanir Project wanted to focus on was fast-paced gameplay, and a reliance on reaction times and reflexes. If you’re good enough, if you’re fast enough, you can win the game.

The hook for Nightmare Boy‘s gameplay is that you travel around the nightmare world completing quests and freeing children. The more kids you free, the more powers that are granted to Nightmare Boy, all designed to help him progress through some of the more difficult levels. It kind of sounds a little bit like Metroid or Dark Souls.

There are also alternate story outcomes depending who the player interacts with and which missions they complete.

At the moment they’re currently seeking votes over on Steam Greenlight in order to appear on the Steam store. Later in 2017 they also have plans on launching on the Xbox One and PS4.