Spanish developer Six Station Games is working on a side-scrolling Metroidvania called Aeterna: Noctis. The hand-animated side-scroller takes a mystical approach to the Metroidvania genre, steeped in folkore and spiritualism.

A demo has been made available for the game, where you play as the King of Darkness on a journey to restore his power and unseat the Queen of Light.

As the King of Darkness, you’ll need to retrieve all of the keys scattered about the land of Aeterna by the Keeper in to restore your true power.

You can download the demo for Aeterna: Noctis right now from over on the Google Drive.

Video footage of the gameplay was uploaded by AlphaBetaGamer, which you can check out below.

The visual style is very dark and gloomy, steeped in Gothic imagery, very similar to Salt and Sanctuary.

The gameplay and combat reminds me of a non-chibi version of Hollow Knight.

You’ll be able to traverse through a non-linear world where you’ll need to recover the soul fragments and restore the King’s strength, while unlocking new abilities and powers along the way.

The game is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter as of the writing of this article, but I don’t think it’s going to make the cut given that it has only eight hours to go and it’s shy of its goal by about $17,000.

It’s a shame because the art and the gameplay look pretty solid. It still has a ways to go as far as polish and content is concerned, but you can still see a lot of promise there in the design of Aeterna: Noctis.

If you were interested in checking the game out or learning more about the crowdfunding campaign, you can do so by visiting the official Kickstarter page. Even though technically it’s going to be wrapping up soon.

(Thanks for the news tip Isthai)