Stingbot Games has announced that their 2.5D action-platformer, The Forbidden Arts, has officially entered into Early Access on Steam.

The game combines a mixture of martial arts melee combat, magic attacks, platforming, and puzzle-solving all wrapped up into one big colorful adventure.

It was originally announced back in January that the game was heading into Early Access in February. Stingbot managed to keep to their launch date and get the game onto Steam in a timely enough manner.

You can see what’s available in The Forbidden Arts with the Early Access trailer below.

The Forbidden Arts is about the main hero named Phoenix, who has latent pyromancy skills awakened within him when he goes to visit a druid. He ends up going on a journey throughout the world of Chora in order to stop an evil plot being hatched by a traditionally evil necromancer.

The developers are already pumping out new content for the game, including the Northern Wastes, where we see the main character in a 3D overworld hub, which makes it possible for players to access the different levels in the game.

You can check out the brief demonstration of the Northern Wastes in the video below.

Not only are there standard story missions, but there are also challenge levels included, where players can complete them in order to upgrade their health and their and fire abilities. Challenge levels can only be unlocked by collecting gold in the other standard levels.

In the demonstration we see that different levels have their own pros and cons. In the case of the ice stage, we learn that the ground is slippery so you slide a lot, and you can’t wall-jump like in other stages so you have to rely on the fire jump.

Stingbot Games still has a lot more planned for The Forbidden Arts, and they’ve estimated that it will take about a year for it to complete its Early Access run. The game is currently available over on the Steam store for $9.99.