Japanese outfit Burning Dust Games and publisher Sakura Game’s Dehumanized is a side-scrolling rogue-lite platformer that’s described as Super Metroid meets Binding of Isaac. The game’s chief selling point is understanding the world’s physics and then manipulating it to your advantage in order to progress through the game.

Players take on the role of Carol who attempts to find a cure for a plague that has spread throughout Capital Island after alien meteorites crash landed on the game.

So the hook for the game is that you have to “take strength from beasts” and utilize the physical interactions within the world to problem solve, allowing you upgrade Carol by infusing her with new abilities from the “Beast System”.

Changing Carol into something more primal so that she becomes stronger or more powerful will also play a role in the ending of the game you unlock, hence the name Dehumanized.

The visuals look very similar to Klei Entertainment’s Shank or Don’t Starve but with a chibi design for the characters.

What you end up with is a game that fuses action-oriented platforming with physics-based puzzle solving and destruction.

They demonstrate in the trailer how you can push objects around, bodyslam the baddies, and use a variety of skills to navigate the obstacles and challenges presented in each stage.

The game boasts more than 200 different props to help increase Carol’s abilities, as well as to unlock and utilize during combat or exploration. Some of the levels will also randomly alter when you play them again to give you different sets of challenges. The elemental system also allows you to combine different elements and create new effects.

I don’t know how well this game will go over with people who aren’t too fond of all the female protagonists in gaming lately, but the concept is pretty neat. It would be nice to see more games take on those kind of mechanics.

You can pick up a digital copy of Dehumanized over on the Steam store for $1.99.