Dandara

This is, conceptually at least, the modern indie game at its worst: Game X meets Game Y, with a twist.

 Dandara borrows its gear-gated 2D structure from the Castlevania and Metroid games of yore. It overlays Dark Souls’ progression and checkpointing system, sparsely dotting the map with campsites at which your health, abilities and restorative items are recharged. Doing so respawns all the enemies you’ve dispatched – and you’ll never guess, but when you die you drop your accrued currency on your corpse, and have one life to get it back. And the twist? The titular heroine can’t run, or jump; she can only zip between two fixed points, the analogue stick lining up her destination, and a button press pinging her over there at speed.