Project Relic is full of Dark Souls, but looks like it's still seeking its own

The ambitious Project Relic, a soulslike multiplayer game that also somehow bills itself as an indie game, revealed a fancy new trailer at the Future Games Show today. South Korean developer Project Cloud Games has only nine employees but, judging by this, they're all absolute Fromsoft nuts.

Nothing wrong with that of course, but as well as the dozens of existing soulslike games there also happens to be Fromsoft's huge back catalogue and the inevitable question of: What's different? Project Relic seems first of all way more combat-oriented, favouring the faster dodge and parry systems of Bloodborne and Sekiro respectively, but seemingly all about these encounters with massive baddies. There's also a sequence where the player character aims at a bit of scenery which falls off and crushes some enemies below, though how dynamic such elements are remains to be seen.

Project Relic seems to take something of a whiplash approach to the formula: Everything's fast, the player sprints everywhere, and successful hits seem to result in mini-explosions. But the influence beneath is so strong (one of these bosses basically looks like a bloated Capra Demon) and the environments so unremarkable that I'm left wondering what will set this apart from everything else in the genre.

The trailer doesn't show multiplayer but, given what we know so far, don't be surprised if it works the same way as it does in Souls. Everything else seemingly does. Project Relic is currently slated for release in early 2023, however, so there's plenty of time for it to prove otherwise.