Duskfade is a 3D action-platformer that looks like it was made by people who spent a lot of time with the genre’s early-2000s golden age and wanted to know what it would feel like now. Weird Beluga — the Spanish studio behind Clid the Snail — and publisher Fireshine Games have opened console pre-orders ahead of an August 13, 2026 launch across PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, and dropped a new trailer alongside it.
The pitch: you’re Zirian, a boy in a clockpunk world plunged into eternal night, with his sister trapped in a Clock Tower and a curse to break. You slash, grind, jump, and grapple through ethereal forests and underwater realms, meet a cast of charming characters, and face down unrelenting bosses to uncover what the Master Clockmakers did.
The painterly art style is the thing that stops you first. It’s genuinely striking, and it’s the kind of visual identity that makes a $29.99 indie platformer look like something considerably more expensive.
What to Expect
The art direction is the headline. A clockpunk world rendered in a painterly style that’s genuinely distinctive — ethereal forests, underwater realms, and environments described as beautiful and dangerous in equal measure.
Slash, grind, jump, and grapple. Duskfade is explicitly built to call back to the classic platformers of the early 2000s — precision platforming paired with action combat, with each level bringing new challenges.
A hero and his companion, in the tradition the genre established. Cuckoo is Zirian’s constant through a world that’s gone dark — and the character-plus-sidekick structure is a deliberate genre callback.
Weird Beluga’s framing is that each enemy and challenge represents a deeper emotional hurdle Zirian has to overcome. A coming-of-age story where the boss fights are doing thematic work — an ambitious claim worth watching.
Where to Pre-Order
The Fireshine connection is worth pausing on. This is the same publisher that put out Denshattack! two days ago to an 88 Metacritic and Very Positive Steam reviews. They’ve built a portfolio on finding indie games with strong, specific identities and getting them in front of people — and a painterly clockpunk platformer from the Clid the Snail team fits that pattern precisely.
Duskfade launches August 13 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2 at $29.99, with 20% off pre-orders on console. The demo’s already out on PlayStation and Xbox if you’d like to make up your own mind first.
