Ember Lab is a 15-person strong independent studio based in Los Angeles, California that initially began as an animation studio back in 2009. Their reel includes “character-driven commercials and animated shorts” for Coca-Cola, Hisense, and Major League Baseball among others.
(Also: Welcome to the next episode of the 2021 Hype Train, where it’s all about positivity in the New Year. And cool games too. You can check out Scott Pilgrim HERE.)
They also made this gem back in 2016 as their “gift to the fans” of the Zelda Universe. (Seriously, it’s amazing.)
Fast Forward….
Announced back in June 2020, Kena: Bridge of Spirits marks the studios first foray into video games. The game is being billed as an action-adventure game, and it’ll be played from a third-person perspective. (Yay!) Kena is the main protagonist of the game; she’s a spirit guide with magical abilities and a staff that can be upgraded to transform into a bow.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits was Game Informer’s cover back in September of last year, and their coverage of the game was fantastic and made me even more excited for its release in a couple of months. I’m sharing a few exerpts from GI’s 20 Questions (And Answers) About Kena: Bridge Of Spirits. (Click the title to take you to the full interview.)
Who is Kena?
Kena is the hero of the game. More specifically, she’s a spirit guide – a person with a special gift who can help guide restless spirits to a peaceful end. In Kena: Bridge of Spirits’ lore, people who have suffered great trauma or who have unresolved business can linger between the physical and spirit world, causing trouble for ordinary (living) people. Kena’s job is to understand what’s keeping them from moving on and helping them reconcile past events.
(Author’s Note: Everything about this sounds great. That’s all.)
Where are we, anyway?
Bridge of Spirits is set in a fictional place that’s an homage to a variety of different Eastern locations. You’ll find nods to Japan, Bali, and other places in the geographic features and architecture. Kena’s not from the place she explores in the game, either. She had to travel quite a distance to get there. Mike jokes that she didn’t ride her bike over, to give you a sense of how far she’s come.
(A/N: The game looks absolutely gorgeous. And I’ve wanted to go to Bali ever since reading – and then watching – Eat, Pray, Love so there’s that too. There’s another interesting tidbit in this response; that Kena isn’t from the place the game is set, either. I hope that’s part of the story.)
What can Kena do?
She can do lots of things. Besides using her staff’s basic light, heavy, and charged attacks, she can get an upgrade that bends the staff and turns it into a bow. On defense, she can use a pulse ability to create a bubble-like shield around her. It has its own health meter, which gets depleted by enemy attacks. If she times its activation correctly, it will stagger enemies and make them more susceptible to attack.
(A/N: I’m a sucker for bows in video games. And customization)
How long is it?
It’s tough to put an exact number on this, because of the number of side activities, but Josh says they set out to make something players could comfortably finish over a weekend.
(A/N: Finish over a weekend? Yes, please! If you’ve been a reader of the blog, you know that between my retail job, Mom life and everything else, I don’t have the time to finish a huge open world game in less than a year.)
How much does it cost?
Kena: Bridge of Spirits isn’t going to be priced at $60. We don’t know the exact price yet, but it won’t cost as much as a traditional full-priced retail game. If you buy it on PS4, you can upgrade the game to PS5 at no additional cost, too.
(A/N: This is important. I plan on buying this game Week One, and I also haven’t gotten ahold of a PS5 yet, and probably won’t until Horizon: Forbidden West comes out. Many people are in the same boat I’m in in that regard.)
It looks cute, but is it challenging?
Mike says the team has a lot of Sekiro and Soulsborne fans on the dev team, and while the game isn’t quite up to FromSoftware’s difficulty, players will be challenged on the highest setting. On the other end of the spectrum, enemies won’t be able to one-shot you in most difficulty settings; you’ll be able to sustain one final sliver of health to give you a fighting chance against tougher enemies. Ember Lab wanted to make a game that families could enjoy together, whether your family just wants to enjoy the story or is looking for tougher battles.
(A/N: I’m grateful that there’s going to be difficulty options at both ends of the spectrum. I play games for the same reason I read books; story, setting and characters. I’m glad that the people who want to be challenged can play on a super-hard mode, but I’m also glad I can play on a mode where I can absorb the story and the lore of Kena without worrying if I’m going to be stuck on a boss or something for an hour.)
Final Verdict
Kena looks to be a wildly original game from a brand-new studio, and I can’t wait to play it. Ember Lab looks like they’re going to give gamers of every age something to look forward to in this game, and that’s not something you can say for every title out there.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is slated for release in March 2021 for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC (via the Epic Games Store).