A couple months back, I briefly previewed a game titled Sliding Hero during a Steam Next Fest. It was the only Metroidvania that I played during the event, which really resonated with me. The reason for this was simple: Sliding Hero focuses much more heavily on puzzle solving, than your typical Metroidvania fair. That’s much more my cadence when it comes to these kinds of games, and I had a really fun time with the demo as a result.

Fast-forward to present day, and I received an email from the sole developer of the project, Paolo Zito, informing me that Sliding Hero had a new demo available. As such, I decided to check-in with the game, and see where it was at after several additional months of development.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a great memory, so I won’t be able to contrast my experience between the 2 demos. Though, I suppose that par for the course now that I’m in my thirties, and play more games than I can keep track of.

Either way, welcome back to Demo Dive, where today we’ll be taking a look at Sliding Hero: the puzzle-centric Metroidvania that I never knew I needed until I played its demo.

But first, we must answer the question: what is Sliding Hero?

Obviously, I’ve already mentioned the broad strokes (Puzzle + Metroidvania), but let’s dive into what that actually looks like in practice. 

To start, Sliding Hero features a very unique style of movement: sliding. Instead of traditional movement, players will push the playable character, Luca, in a given direction. He’ll then continue to move in said direction until he collides with something. That means the entire game plays akin to the Ice Path dungeon from Pokémon Crystal, and all movement throughout the overworld is turned into a puzzle.

Even though the movement in Sliding Hero is unconventional, I loved it. There’s no special reason for why. I just did. Movement-based puzzles are always something I’ve enjoyed, and are a big part of why I enjoy more expressive platforming games. It’s just fun to solve problems built around how your character can move. And that holds true in Sliding Hero where movement takes an entirely different form.

Though I will say: I know this game won’t be for everyone. I get the feeling that Sliding Hero is so niche in its appeal that most folks will know if they’ll jive from the game just by watching the trailer alone. For example, my wife looked particularly perturbed when I described the game to her (sorry, Paolo). She was equally unsurprised when I told her that I had an excellent time playing the updated demo.

The only other thing I wanted to mention in regard to the movement is that it’s surprisingly snappy. You wouldn’t think that’d be the case because movement is typically slower in Puzzle-y games, especially when movement is a core component of the puzzle design. However, Sliding Hero bucks that trend, and it felt really good to zip around levels as a result. The movement almost felt akin to a more traditional action game with how responsive everything was.

I’m sorry if that description doesn’t paint a particularly clear picture, so here’s a quick video where I zip through a couple screens to show what I mean:

And, if that still doesn’t do it then I guess it’s just one of those game feel things you need to experience first-hand by playing the demo for yourself?

Anyway, as far as the Metroidvania side of things is concerned, you’ll collect additional power-ups along your journey, which add new mechanics to the many movement-focused puzzles. The demo featured 2 new powers that I found: a power glove, and spears. In both cases, these new mechanics helped to expand what was possible, and deepened the variety of puzzles.

Before we wrap up, there’s 1 final thing I wanted to mention: the atmosphere.

To say that Sliding Hero is dripping with atmosphere would be an understatement. You’ve probably already noticed from the accompanying trailer, but the game is chock full of incredibly odd imagery. This gives the game world an almost otherworldly feeling. It’s like Luca is roaming through a kind of demented purgatory instead of the land of the living.

The music is also the perfect accompaniment to the strange visuals. It’s got a bit of an unsettling undercurrent to it, which makes things feel a little off-kilter. Make no mistakes – this doesn’t make the music “bad.” Instead, it perfectly encapsulates the eerie vibes that Sliding Hero appears to be aiming for, and I, for one, am here for it even though I wouldn’t necessarily queue up the soundtrack as part of my Spotify playlist.

Well, I think that’ll do it for Sliding Hero.

As I already stated, Sliding Hero seems like the kind of game where you’re immediately going to know if it’s for you or not. If you’re even a little bit interested in it, I’d encourage you to download the demo (via Steam), and give it a try for yourself. It takes between 30, and 45 minutes to complete, and should give you a fairly clear cut indicator as to whether or not Sliding Hero is for you.

Also, if you happen to be reading this article around its original publication date, then Sliding Hero will be featured as part of Draknek & Friends’ Cerebral Puzzle Showcase. The exact same demo I just played should be playable for the duration of this showcase, so you really have no excuses not to check it out for yourself.

And don’t forget to wishlist the game if you enjoyed the demo. This is an easy way to support developers ahead of their game’s launch, and it’ll send you a handy notification once the game releases.

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