Trek to Yomi hands-on preview - A playable Kurosawa homage

It is impossible to look at Trek to Yomi without immediately understanding its influences. Samurai movies from the legendary Akira Kurosawa and other influential directors are the reason Trek to Yomi looks and feels the way it does. Each and every scene is depicted in grayscale, with a grainy edge that can make you believe you’re watching the game through an old projector. The style has been cemented, and it looks the part. 

Shadows lick up against buildings cast by flames as you follow the path of destruction, too often too late to actually save anyone. The camera fixes itself from a distant perspective, almost as if you’re a voyeur, watching battles unfold from afar. It can feel disconnected, but once again it imitates and replicates the feel of watching an old movie, with low-definition cameras placed far away for cinematic fight scenes. The camera follows as you move through levels, which seems to move simply from left to right more often than not, and this gives you excellently framed camera angles for each clash and new environment. 

While you’re not always fixed to a 2D plane, that is often the case, and it makes battles much easier. Instead of watching for opponents coming from every angle, you just need to focus on the left and right, blocking and parrying strikes on both sides before finishing foes. In these more fraught moments, it has the essence of a rhythm game, with a simple back and forth of timing your counters with the incoming attacks. 

At least, that’s when everything works as intended. In the demo build we played, things still felt a little bit rough, with attacks feeling delayed, controls sometimes feeling stiff, and animations not quite conveying whether or not our efforts were being rewarded. Death isn’t a massive punishment in Trek to Yomi, as dying to try again regularly is a staple of modern action games, but when those deaths don’t feel earned it instead feels frustrating. 

Combat is a key component of Trek to Yomi, but if this is polished and refined in time for release at some point later this year, it could be an essential game to play. The visuals are already very impressive, with weather effects looking convincingly intense, and the visual juxtaposition between lighter and darker parts of the screen in a grayscale game makes for some incredibly striking scenes. This really just needs those final touches really to make the combat pop and feel responsive. 

While it’s too early to say whether or not you should be placing a pre-order, Trek to Yomi is definitely one to watch. Add this to your watchlist now and keep an eye out for more coverage and trailers, because this could be one of 2022’s sleeper hits.

Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.