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⚠️ Early Access Notice

This is the very first Early Access version of Kenzu: Shadow and Light.
The full game will offer 8–10 hours of gameplay, but for now only about 1 hour is available while we finish the remaining chapters.

We’re a small South American team that’s been working on this project for over a year, and we’re putting everything we have into completing it. Our goal is to release the entire experience here on Itch.io, starting with the first few hours and updating frequently.

Some enemies and environments still use placeholder or unfinished art, and certain visual elements (like the loading bar and UI polish) are being improved.

Your feedback and support mean the world to us — it helps us keep building and improving every week.
Thank you for playing and for being part of this journey! 💜


Kenzu: Shadow and Light 

Created by Lambda Forge Studio

In a world that's collapsing into chaos, Kenzu will reconnect with the legacy of the seven Kato clans to tap into ancient powers and save his people. 

Kenzu: Shadow and Light is a metroidvania inspired by recent indie masterpieces like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous. 

Unlock new skills, explore rich and diverse biomes, find upgrades and face ever more challenging enemies and bosses as the story unfolds! 

Controls

Key Action
A / ←Move left
D / →Move right
S / ↓Crouch
SpaceJump
S + SpaceJump down
HParry
JSlash / Attack
LShuriken (needs unlock)
RConcentration to heal
Left ShiftDash
MMap
EInteract
TabMenu

Version: Early Access

Please note this game is in Early Access. We hope you enjoy what we've built so far. Comments and suggestions are appreciated!


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Discord invite

OST

Enjoy our soundtrack!

Updated 6 hours ago
Published 9 days ago
StatusIn development
PlatformsHTML5, Windows, macOS, Linux
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(29 total ratings)
Authorlambdaforge
GenrePlatformer
Made withUnity
Tags2D, Action-Adventure, Controller, Exploration, Metroidvania, Souls-like, Story Rich
Average sessionAbout an hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Joystick
LinksDiscord, Twitter/X

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

kenzu-shadow-and-light-macos.zip 609 MB
Version 1
kenzu-shadow-and-light-linux.zip 584 MB
Version 1
kenzu-windows.zip 1.2 GB
Version 2

Development log

Comments

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Absolutely stunning!! The images are amazing 

Great game, and an amazing team ❤️

(+1)

New saga! Love metroidvanias.
Beautiful artistic style, awesome music too!
Please make more like this.
i'll definitely play it to the end next weekend

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Masterpiece! Can’t wait for whats comming! Congratulations 🙂

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Octa, u are the goat, junk town music is the perfect mix between Buenos Aires and neon light, optimism , courage. love it !
thanks to all the artist involved in the project, such a team.

(+1)

special mention to Valentin de las Casas, head of concept art !

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Hi! Loved the backgrounds and how the game is set up. The atmosphere and the sounds are great and really immersive. For a first test, theres already a lot of content to enjoy and I really liked it! cant wait for the full release to continue the story <3

Heeeey! Glad to see more of this game starting to come out.

I got some feedback and it might be a bit too much but it's free!

1. Game Feel:

  • Most game queues and hints feel very shy, the graphic style could definetly go ESPECTACULAR, go all for it. Metroidvanias don't need to be coy with the player.
  • One aspect of this is enemy pattern signaling, making obvious decisions here won't hurt the game difficulty, and this ties directly to the animation principles: Anticipation, Action, Reaction. And this three weaved with Exageration.
  • This applies, tho condensed in order to feel responsive, to the player actions. Right now Dashes feel like an interrupt while parrying feels like a slow block. This makes the parry action confusing.
  • Tieing this last two bullet-points is where I think there is still a search for that sweet spot for player agency at the moment to decide the parry, making sure player can tell between parry-able and unblockable attacks. (Remember most game keep unblockable attacks in few minion enemies to highlight this as a Boss Trait)
  • IMPACT! both enemy and player attacks do not feel impactfull enough, there is a ton of feedback lacking, and honestly the dmg bonus from no hit combos is confusing, figured it out while thinking about it after the playthrough (this is another place to go ESPECTACULAR)
  • Enviroment queues are also a bit lacking, closer tho, but here is where this game make use of obvious signaling to player, cracks, weak appeareances, not just old looking.
  • I like my metroidvania with secret walls, chests laying around like they are right now feel like an afterthought (for a resource I can't even use) and substract from the current demo experience.
  • Hide those chests, or put em in a route where you tease the player first to make em explore in the direction they can't penetrate directly.

2. Setting and Storytelling:

  • Where am I? Who are this people? Why are they so helpless? Why the boss lays eggs? 
  • The look is COOL and thank the dev-spirits you are not dealing with banding on your paralax environments, but everything feels disconected, roaming around without really belonging.
  • Enemies are mutants? Monsters? There is no clarity if this creatures are coming from the capsules I see laying around or if they are demons like the first boss

The game has excelent bones, I see the vision but I don't get inspired by it, if you guys work more on that I can assure this can be a very succesful metroidvania!

(+1)

Thanks for the thoughtful comments! This definitely gives us some food for thought... we're going to take a bit to analyze this and try to improve on these points in future releases

(+1)

Amazing, can’t wait for more!

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This is the kind of game I love, beautiful art, wonderful music and on top of all that a very polished gameplay

(+1)

Really cool stuff! I'm still getting defeated by the first tough wave of enemies but I'm enjoying the process of trying again and again.

Music is amazinggg, parry is a bit confusing tho. What can be parried and what can't? besides that gameplay feels really good, congrats!!

(+1)

Hi Pastelitor, almost every enemy can be parried, except those that deal contact damage and projectiles. Thank you for the feedback, we really appreciate it and will keep improving the experience!

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I love the music!