PAX East 2022: Lucid Crosses Celeste With Metroidvania Mechanics

Apogee's rebranding has been a kind of return to form for the decades-old publisher. Its roots are in fast-paced games and it's continuing to work with developers making fast-paced games. Turbo Overkill, a game that looks at Doom Eternal and says, "that's too slow" proves that much. The company's selection of games at PAX East 2022 is very much in that same vein, save for one that it decided to keep secret. That game is Lucid, a platformer being developed by one man, Eric Manahan, and it's a far cry from the other games Apogee is showing off.

Instead of a shooter accompanied by pumped-up music meant to send players into some kind of blood rage, Lucid opts for a calmer approach. It pulls the same chill vibes from Celeste, as well as that game's movement, all while throwing players into the middle of a Metroidvania-like map.

To be clear though, I wasn't able to actually play Lucid. The game, which Eric has been developing for just a year and a half, wasn't exactly safe for consumers to play. "So I was asked to come to PAX East very last-minute by Apogee. I was woefully unprepared because I pretty much tore apart the game, I was fixing some stuff, so I thought nothing of it. Then I got here and by midday, someone asked me, 'hey do you have a build?' and I had to make one. I scrambled, I put one together, I tied some rooms together and that's how I was able to show it."

The gameplay of Lucid I was able to see clearly had a lot of DNA borrowed from Celeste. The rooms that Eric threw together late that night were extremely movement-based. By jumping and dashing through a wall, the small character Eric controlled got a jump back. That wall slam was chained into another bash through a gem, and a downward slam that gave the character a bounce back up. By the end of his short demonstration, Eric was guiding that character through levels within seconds, speeding through walls and gems in every direction.

But Lucid's main gameplay loop isn't all about movement. According to Eric, the game will have five different biomes when it eventually launches, with each having its own legacy dungeon and boss fight. And like any boss fight at the end of a dungeon, players get a new tool as a reward. These tools are situational and will give players new ways to fight enemies as well as move around.

Despite its emphasis on quick movement that's tied with combat, Lucid is still a breakaway from the other game under Apogee's umbrella I saw, Turbo Overkill. In that game you're a 100% badass guy with guns and a chainsaw for a leg. Carnage and death ensue. Lucid is much more low-key, kind of on the opposite side of the spectrum from everything else Apogee was showing off. It was tonal whiplash for me, flipping straight from a session of Turbo Overkill to seeing Lucid and its calm art style, which Eric described as "somber, melancholy '90s pixel art."

According to Eric, though, the game still has a long way to go. It may have been at Apogee's both, but he told me that there isn't any finalized deal. "The deal is in the works. We're talking, trying to figure it out. Hopefully we come to an agreement, I'd love to join the family. Nothing is signed but, you know, fingers crossed."

Likewise, there's still a lot more work to be done on Lucid. "There's a lot of art to do, I have some musicians helping me out, I have a bunch of the story to write, there's a lot of work to be done but I'm down to do it."

More than anything though, Eric is excited to flesh out the world of Lucid. He's been teasing the game through his Instagram page for some time, which he says people have been responding well to.

Eric currently plans for Lucid to have a demo in August or September, but the game can be wishlisted on Steam right now.