After 6 years of solo development, anime-inspired Metroidvania riffing on Cuphead relaunches on Kickstarter with a $1 goal and raises over $9000

Exil is another gorgeous side-scrolling Metroidvania that's just hit Kickstarter, and it's absolutely smashed its modest funding goal of... a singular dollar.

In true Metroidvania spirit, Exil has you traversing ''mystical landscapes'' to ''uncover hidden paths and secrets'' with fast and fluid action that lets you switch between different ability loadouts on the fly. What really caught my eye in the trailer below was how it riffs on Cuphead's delightful parry - where you can double jump off of pinkish projectiles - which encourages you to put yourself in danger if you want the extra advantage.

Exil also has a vague ''multilayered story'' that asks you to piece together its disparate fragments and is inspired by Attack on Titan. I'm wondering if that manifests in a Breath of the Wild or Outer Wilds way where you actually need to collect nuggets of information to find out what's really going on - or, if it's more of a wordless, 'make of it what you will' type of affair like Inside.

Developer Mystic Clockwork Studio also cites Nier Automata and, of course, the modern classic of the genre, Hollow Knight, as inspirations.

Exil actually had another go at crowdfunding last year, but failed to reach its goal. ''While I'm really proud of how the game looks, I also see there's room for it to get even better,'' the game's developer wrote at the time. ''My personal style and skills have evolved over the years, and this evolution has unintentionally added to the game's inconsistency. So, what's next? I'm all set for a significant revamp.''

Now, after asking for just $1, Exil's Kickstarter has raised over $9,000 to cover ''essential development costs, such as digital tool fees, legal fees, miscellaneous expenses, music/sound, and marketing.''

There's no release date for this one at the moment, but the developer says it's about 75% done and should come to Steam when it's ready with ''with future plans for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox releases, though they may not launch