It's not fair that shooters get almost all the fun.  Bullet hell is for everyone, but classic arcade vertical or horizontal shooters tend to get the lion's share.  Sure, there's the occasional RPG like Knights in the Nightmare, and platformers have had a crack at the genre before in the form of Rabi-Ribi, but these are rare exceptions.  Kelipot (a variant on the Hebrew word for husk, or evil/impure spiritual forces) is aiming to add a little bit of bullet-based madness to its action-platforming, and while the game is still incredibly early, it's already got a distinctive look and solid gameplay feel.

Kain and Abel are brothers, which is always a recipe for disaster.  Abel is the younger one you play as, and the game opens with Kain waking him up to get ready for a trial in a monster-infested castle.  After a brief tutorial Abel goes through a short dungeon area, only to be greeted by the mysterious stranger Carter who reveals that a mysterious silver key grants Abel the ability to send things through time.  As an experiment he sends a piece of paper into the past only to find Carter wasn't quite so accurate in his description of the key's powers.  Abel is in an decrepit alternate world where Kain has disappeared for years, but with the trial still undone in this world he runs through it again, except this time there are more traps to deal with.  Arriving back at the start again he's finally greeted by this world's version of Kain, who promptly jumps into a swirly purple portal.  This leads to an epic face-off where Abel has to use every power at his command to survive Kain's bullet-hell onslaught.  Something has gone very wrong in the ruined version of Abel's world, but what that may be is a mystery for the full game to reveal.

Most of the gameplay, on the other hand, is right out in the open.  Abel has a good number of moves, two special attacks that draw off a magic gauge and passive items of varying effects.  The standard run, jump and slash are available, of course, plus a limited-range dash that lets you zip horizontally through enemies and projectiles, and different dash that sends you plummeting safely to the floor no matter how far down it may be.  The two magic abilities are divided between Active Skill, which releases a large aura draining the entire gauge in a single use, absorbing bullets to use their power in various ways, and Secondary Attack, which is a ranged burst of magic that's a little more economical on the power usage.  Finally there are the passive skills, waiting for their chance to be useful when their requirements are met.  While Kain's moves and attacks are strong and flashy, Abel's moves are more than capable of going toe-to-toe against his older brother's power.

The Kelipot demo I got to play is unquestionably early but, for the ten minutes it takes to complete, has a good amount of options already built in.  The active skill has two versions available, one of which sends bullets it cancels directly back to the magic gauge and the other of which auto-fires the secondary attack.  The different secondary attacks were a rain of fireballs, an upgrade to the default dagger-throw that turns it into a fan of blades, and even a blue bouncy-ball that sticks to whatever surface it first lands on, going around corners or up walls.  Passive skills added an explosion to any surface hit by the secondary attack, converting a missed shot into another opportunity for damage, or let Abel absorb magic from an enemy when attacking from behind, fire off the active skill to avoid taking a hit when at full magic and even tag enemies with a symbol when hitting them with a secondary attack so they take double damage from the next attack.  That last ability comes in the form of the Knight's Ring and an altar in the second go-round of the trial lets you upgrade it to stack up to three symbols at once on an enemy for serious damage potential.  Once I had an idea of how Abel's abilities work together I could whip through the demo in a couple of minutes, testing out item combinations and wishing there was more content to use them on.

As it turned out, there actually was a little more content than readily apparent.  The full game is going to be built of randomized combinations of pre-built areas, so when you go back to re-explore you'll get something new.  While this isn't fully integrated into this early version the trial area had two very different versions that swapped back and forth if you ignored the story for a bit and re-explored the area.  The thing about an early demo is that, instead of choosing randomly, the game selected the two hand-built areas one after the other, but it's still proof of concept.  Other plans are for different item combinations to open up different areas of what will eventually be a fully-sized dungeon in the classic Metroidvania style.  And, as is obvious by the screens and video, the high-definition art for characters and backgrounds looks simply fantastic.  I'll admit that,while playing, I hadn't noticed how dynamic Abel's animations are, but in screenshots it's hard to miss the energy in each frame.  There's still a long way to go to see Kelipot reach its potential, expanding from the current demo into the furry action-platformer it wants to become, but with the basics playing nicely and the art looking so sharp, there's plenty of reason to keep an eye on this one as it works its way towards completion.

Check out an exclusive gameplay video of Kelipot below:

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU19391/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8INickTjmw