Top Hat Studios—the publisher behind the upcoming RPG, The Backworld—recently unveiled a demo announcement trailer for another of their upcoming indie releases. Created by the small team of developers behind Regular Studio, MOTORSLICE has taken the internet by storm over the past months since its initial reveal in 2024. The game’s silent atmosphere, afforded by its calming yet post-apocalyptic, brutalist. and sand-coated liminal spaces, is contrasted by the looming presence of hulking, unexplained construction equipment. These earthshaking abominations traverse the empty sand corridors of the megastructure that your main character, ‘P’, finds herself amidst after arriving with the assumption that this would be a simple day of work in her position as a ‘slicer’.
MOTORSLICE is a parkour adventure platformer where physics-based puzzles and exploration are only half of the job, as monstrous mind-controlled construction equipment towers overhead. Equipped with only a chainsaw sword and her acrobatic abilities, P is tasked with slicing her way to the top of each excavator abomination, to fell the hostile beasts that roam the otherwise peaceful megastructure.
Fans of the PlayStation 2 classic Shadow of the Colossus are sure to recognize similarities between the boss combat featured in MOTORSLICE and its spiritual predecessor, as platforming across the backs of each boss is a necessary step in defeating the game’s hulking machines. Emergent gameplay is a possibility here, as creativity in how the player goes about taking down each boss is left up to them. By traversing the bodies of these platformable beasts, both on foot and by stabbing your chainsword directly into their body to reach their weak points, P will be able to take down the abominations one by one.
The beautifully modernized retro 3D scenery beheld from within the high verticality of the curious megastructure that surrounds you—paired with the atmospheric drum and bass soundtrack teased throughout the game’s trailers by Pizza Hotline—evokes a feeling that often can only be experienced within an indie title. Fans online are excited to get their hands on the game for all of these compounding factors; however, excitement has only ramped up as of late, despite the game’s official release date still to be announced. This is due primarily to MOTORSLICE receiving a free-to-play demo for PC via Steam as of September 23.