Combine Sekiro and Risk of Rain 2 and you're pretty close to this unhinged open-world game's Steam Next Fest demo, which I was only kind of into until I parried the ground

Breakneck open-world action game V.A Proxy has been on my radar for over a year now, so I was eager to try its updated demo this Steam Next Fest. It's still unpolished, but creator PyroLith has cooked up an intriguingly bizarre, unapologetically absurd combo fiesta capable of seemingly limitless spectacle. 

The demo for V.A Proxy is rough around the edges. I wouldn't bother with a controller, for one, as it seems to mess up the menus and inputs. That said, the default keyboard and mouse controls are actually solid, though the camera feels a little too close and a touch slow given how fast this game wants you to go. There's very little direction or guidance – perhaps intentionally – so it's easy to feel lost. But once I got a sense of where to go and what to do, swiftly falling down a hole and then striking out on a journey as a souped-up robot in a crumbling, retro mech world, it all started to click. 

The point, I gather, is to go anywhere you want and do the stupidest, coolest stuff you can think up. There are a few weapons, gadgets, and Nier: Automata-esque drones to choose from in the demo, and stringing them together in increasingly acrobatic ways is heart-pumping stuff. I'm partial to the laser spear that you can ride like a motorcycle, and ride in circles to summon energy tornadoes, but the katana that summons a clone for special attacks is pretty cool too. 

The glue that holds V.A Proxy together is parrying. Parry projectiles, parry explosions, parry giant pipes, parry a nuclear bomb, and while you're at it go ahead and parry the ground itself to extend your jump combo infinitely. Games like Sekiro treat parrying as a core defensive maneuver. V.A Proxy approaches it more like a law of the universe. The speed of light, the boiling point of water, and your sword's ability to sever all reality are equally constant. Your superbot parries as naturally and effortlessly as it sprints, and the clang of nailing the timing is always fantastic. 

I'm suddenly unsure whether to call this a Soulslike – PyroLith just calls it a "fast-paced parry and movement-focused combat game with a massive dynamic megastructure to explore" – because the feeling I get from it is more like that point in a Risk of Rain 2 run where you have more movement items than fingers and the landscape just vanishes beneath you as enemies explode in concert. That pacing is where V.A Proxy starts, combat and platforming cranked to 11, and the full game seems to be all that and about a zillion ludicrous boss fights, plus a grappling hook. The high point of my demo was one early boss with an energy bazooka, so that bodes well. 

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