The fox deceives - the charming Yokai Tales: Fox takes on Assassin's Creed and Mirror's Edge

If you only read the game's description on Steam and look at a few screenshots, Yokai Tales: Fox comes across as a cheeky fox trying to pull the wool over your eyes. What looks like a simple The Legend of Zelda clone in still images turns out to be a hardcore parkour game that makes Mirror's Edge and the original Assassin's Creed look like stiff-legged pensioners.

However, it all makes sense when I meet Maximos Malevitis, the game's Creative Director. With his long hair tied up in a man bun and his lively body language, he doesn't look like your typical game developer, and despite a background in systems engineering, he isn't. He has practised parkour professionally, and with Yokai Tales: Fox, he has found a way to combine his profession and his hobby.

"I've always liked the old Assassin's Creed games, but they still held the player's hand too much. It was difficult to play in your own way. After training in parkour for many years, I wanted to create something new - it's not a platformer, but it's a game where you can interact with pretty much the whole world."

The world in Yokai Tales: Fox is not just for decoration, even though it is stunningly beautiful with its Zelda-like style. Malevitis explains that almost all objects can be interacted with in some way, unlike in Assassin's Creed, for example, where you can only jump, slide, and manoeuvre along carefully selected objects.

"Many of our manoeuvres involve edges, objects, fences, and the characters themselves. We had to build a lot of technology to ensure that everything that moves can be used to grab onto. Every time you do a parkour trick, you can also end the animation in several different ways - it can be with an attack, a higher jump, a longer jump, or a rotation."

Just like in real parkour, it's about seeing opportunities where others see obstacles. But it probably takes a little time to change your perspective, and not least your body, so that the small fence becomes the first step towards the rooftop, and not the road to the hospital. I learn this the hard way - fortunately without getting seriously hurt - in the game's training section. Even though I'm just learning the basic manoeuvres here, I have to reload several times, and I get unpleasant flashbacks to gym classes of yesteryear, where doing a somersault or leaping over a pommel horse seemed completely impossible. In the end, however, I manage to fight my way through the training levels.

Yokai Tales: Fox is undoubtedly a game that you have to learn to master. But once you do, it can look amazing. Malevitis illustrates this when he grabs the controller himself. Our main character Lionna ("name pending," adds Malevitis) now flies through the floating and abstract level like a combination of Sonic the Hedgehog and an Olympic gymnast.

After learning the basics, we finally leave the more abstract training landscapes and step into the game's vast open world. On the surface, it looks like a typical fantasy landscape of the kind we've seen countless times since Breath of the Wild was released in 2017. But the inspiration for the game's world actually comes from the real world, as the developer's name - Silkroad Studios - also reveals.

"The world is a fantasy version of the Silk Road. My father was a researcher and he studied the Silk Road for many years, so we travelled a lot. The game is a kind of tribute to the places I grew up. But funnily enough, many of our employees also come from or near the historic Silk Road. A large part of our graphics and our world come from people who have visited these places. In this way, the world reflects our studio's philosophy, which is to build bridges between ideas from East and West."

While the fantastic environments undoubtedly draw players in, they also represent a challenge for Silkroad Studios. Malevitis explains that while their primary audience loves the challenging parkour, there are also many who find it a little too difficult to learn. Based on playtests, the developer has therefore moved towards a Metroidvania structure, where you start with only the most basic abilities but then learn more and more tricks.

"You will learn more abilities as time goes by. You will find Yokai mentors and rescue Yokai babies who will teach you new tricks. We moved the development towards a Metroidvania style, as it allows us to teach players the different mechanics one at a time. We give them time to learn how they work. At the same time, it also makes the work easier for us as developers in terms of designing the world and controlling the pacing of the game."

Silkroad Studios is currently working on securing more funding for the ambitious project, which has already received support from the Danish Film Institute and the Innovation Fund, among others. If the funds fall into place, Malevitis hopes to have the game ready for launch within a year, although he emphasises that this is not something he can promise. But the plans are clear. When the game is released, it will feature an approximately 12-hour campaign and a level editor that allows the most hardcore players to create their own parkour challenges. We are both dreading and looking forward to the launch.