A side-scrolling pixel game with a Dark Souls-like approach to combat isn't going to garner much attention on its own. The last few years of indie games have seen to it that we have a few of these gems, like Blasphemous and Death's Gambit. There's something intriguing about Acid Knife, one of the demos available for The Game Awards. After taking a look at it, we can safely say that there are plenty of things that will capture your interest in the title.

The first and most apparent trait is the look. The pixel artwork is bleak, but that choice makes some of the brighter colors, like red and white, stand out in contrast. The fluid nature of the creatures crafted here will remind you of the team's previous work on Crawl. The flowing waves will certainly grab your attention. Except for a few feet around you, which is presented clearly, everything else is bathed in flowing waves of pixels that smear and bleed all over the screen. Aside from being eye-catching, it does a great job of obscuring the rest of the world, so you're unsure if you're seeing a platform, a monster, or a set of spikes.

The other thing that you'll notice is the methodical combat system. You may have a character that can execute a wall climb with ease, but he isn't adept at dashing or rolling. Moves are done one at a time, without a chance to combo, and all of the items you pick up are susceptible to breakage unless you hit the glowing red spots on enemies.

Your method of fighting involves lots of jumping around and waiting for an opening until you find the red spot to hit before repeating the process until the enemy dies. Enemies like the slower-moving skull slugs are easy to deal with, since their weak spot is exposed at all times. The larger skull walkers hardly have their weak spot exposed, so you'll run away more often than fighting them. Adding depth to the combat is the fact that you can only hold up to five items at a time, and since your actions are dictated by your inventory, what you have directly determines what you can and can't do. Get a weapon, and you can perform omnidirectional attacks, but grab some flint, and you'll be able to restore the health of your blades. Red orbs become the most important item, since they're required to open doors.

The one thing that'll affect combat more than weapon durability is the fact that items can get knocked out of you whenever you touch spikes or get hit by an enemy. That can range from the weapon or shield you're holding to a potion to the gems. Those items don't drop straight down, either; they fly off in an arc, and that can mean landing near spikes, in a corner with no escape, or next to a slow-moving enemy. The red orbs can be annoying to lose. Although you can farm them out of foes, the time it takes to do so can make recovery faster than farming. Losing weapons is disastrous, since you can still punch enemies to death, but that produces no orbs.

With all of the systems in concert, you have a system where caution is rewarding, but being able to quickly recover is paramount to preventing instant death. Like any game inspired by Dark Souls, Acid Knife punishes the impatient while rewarding those who know how to fight well enough to flee before getting greedy. Luckily, the demo provides for unlimited lives, so you can see the end and test your skills in a combat arena, but we'll be curious to see if this remains in later builds.

Acid Knife currently has no release date. The demo calls itself something less than a prototype, with lots of placeholder stuff everywhere. What we're seeing is very different from other titles, due to the methodical combat, fragility of weapons, and the ease with which items can be knocked away from you. There's also the aesthetic, which is both psychedelic yet restrictive due to your inability to see beyond a few feet in front of you. After checking out the demo, we're certainly looking forward to seeing more of Acid Knife in the coming year.