Afterimage

Afterimage is a 2D action-metroidvania developed by Aurogon Shanghai and published by Modus Games. It drops you into a post-catastrophe fantasy world called Engardin, where civilization has collapsed and a young woman named Renee sets out to find her missing mentor. The hook is immediately visual: the hand-drawn art is genuinely exceptional for a studio at this scale, with backgrounds that look closer to animated film production art than a typical indie side-scroller. If you have ever paused a game just to sit in a room and look at it, Afterimage will give you several of those moments. Combat is the mechanical spine. Renee accumulates a large roster of weapons across several categories, including swords, whips, and staves, and you swap between builds to exploit enemy weaknesses. There is a skill tree that branches into distinct playstyles, and late-game builds can feel genuinely expressive. The problem is that early hours lean heavily on repetition before the loadout options open up. Enemy aggression is tuned high from the start, and the checkpoint spacing in certain zones can push the experience from challenging toward fatiguing. Players comfortable with punishing metroidvanias will find their footing; players who came mainly for the art may hit a wall before the world fully opens. The map is large, possibly too large. Backtracking is a core metroidvania loop, and Afterimage commits to it completely, which rewards methodical explorers but can feel aimless without careful attention to where abilities unlock new paths. The soundtrack deserves a specific callout: the score moves between delicate ambient passages and urgent orchestral swells in a way that genuinely supports the mood of each zone rather than functioning as background noise. It is one of the stronger audio companions in recent indie action releases. Where Afterimage earns its mixed reputation is in the gap between its obvious craft and its structural decisions. The story is present and has genuine emotional beats, but the pacing of its revelations is uneven, and the dialogue occasionally leans on genre clichés that the art direction has already elevated past. Some players will find the opening hours too slow to reward the later complexity; others will find the mid-game too scattered. The 77 percent positive rating on Steam with nearly ten thousand reviews suggests a player base that is genuinely split, not one that broadly bounced off a bad product. If you are the kind of player who finishes Hollow Knight and immediately asks what else exists in that neighborhood, Afterimage belongs on your list with an honest caveat: it does not quite sustain the same design discipline, but it has its own identity, particularly in its art and its audio. It is a first major release from a studio that clearly has taste, and the rougher edges read more like growing pains than indifference. Give it the two hours it needs to open up before you decide. Kai, Scout Team