The ultra-cool open-world Soulslike that lets you parry nukes and God has a demo out now

Parrying has been a video game constant recently - center stage in everything from Sekiro and Assassin’s Creed to the Star Wars Jedi games - but the upcoming indie V.A Proxy takes the art of warding off attacks to new extremes. Oh, and the first demo is out right now.

V.A Proxy might be familiar to you social media surfers since several clips of the game have gone viral, mainly for how boisterously over the top the action looks. This is the open world Soulslike that lets you parry a literal nuclear bomb, after all, and things seem to be getting even more bombastic. 

“V.A Proxy demo is out,” reads developer Pyro Lith’s announcement tweet. “Go out there and parry God! Or harass local machines minding their business.” The clip then shows our mechanical hero blocking against a towering machine that dwarfs most mega bosses in action games. 

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It’s basically Shadow Of The Colossus with Devil May Cry’s unapologetic style. And if you don’t believe me, check out the tweet below to see our character scale a mechanical flying leviathan using a grappling hook. Man, this game can’t get any cooler. 

“As time passes, the once enduring megastructure began to rot from the inside out and the dwellers of this world began to follow suit, while a handful managed to keep their sanity,” reads the game’s Steam description. “S-units, weapons of mass destruction said to be the harbingers of war, began to awake, breaking a hard-earned stalemate many machines fought for.”

Presumably, it’s then our mission to take out these walking weapons of destruction across the “seamless hand-crafted open world.” As exciting as parrying a nuke is, the promise of a beautiful “decaying world” that “paints break-taking scenes that tell stories” is just as tantalizing for me. 

For such a maximalist game, I’m curious to see where V.A Proxy goes next. Parrying nukes and God is cool and all (obviously), but I’m guessing there’ll be more surprises (potentially more epic ones, if that’s possible) waiting in the final game, which doesn’t yet have a release window. Regardless, the rhythmic flow of learning an enemy’s movement and responding to them is always satisfying to pull off. 

For more unexpected but welcome surprises, check out the indie games coming in 2024 and beyond.