Rubi: The Wayward Mira is a 2D pixel art platformer from indie developer Erik Halverson that’s been in the works for the past couple of years, and today prolific mobile publisher and developer Crescent Moon Games has announced that they’ll be putting the game out on mobile sometime next year. The game is described as “a 2D metroidvania fantasy platformer with settings and inspiration taken from particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider located at CERN." Here’s a brief story synopsis of Rubi followed by some screens:
“Casimir is a dying planet. The native inhabitants, the ‘Mira’, have extracted the mana from the leylines of the world to support their civilization, leading to the collapse of the ecosystem that supports all life on the planet. During the decline of the land, a young Mira was born without the ability to use mana, Rubi.
An otherwise fatal condition, Rubi had two implants installed in the backs of her palms to regulate her mana flow, allowing her to survive among the increasing decay.
The years passed, and the population decreased as the Mira frantically scavenged for whatever mana remnants they could find… when Rubi and some of her kin find themselves suddenly transported into a strange lush land on Earth."
Rubi: The Wayward Mira has been in the works for a while, and the developer has been working very closely with the game’s community of fans along the way. There is a free Windows demo to try out on the game’s webpage, and you can even purchase the “full" desktop version for $9.99. I say full in quotes because the nature of this project is that it’s not really a finished game in a traditional sense as the developer is constantly adding new features, new levels, and polishing up the visuals. There’s a Discord chat you can join where work-in-progress stuff gets posted, and you can become a Patreon member for exclusive access to early builds. I tell ya, indie game development (much like indie website publishing) is a hustle from every angle you can find.
We’ll surely have more news about the mobile release of Rubi: The Wayward Mira as we head toward its release sometime in 2019, and I’ll leave you with this (pretty old) trailer showcasing the demo version of the game so you can get an idea of what it’s like in motion.
