One indie title that was consistently drawing eyes at PAX Aus this year was A Halloween Valentine, from Things for Humans Creative Director and man behind Monster Mansion, Jacob Leaney.

Like the man himself, A Halloween Valentine marries gameplay with music, only rewarding successful actions if they’re done in time to the beat. A spiritual successor to the creator’s Video World and reminiscent of Crypt of the Necrodancer, the PAX demo showcased a slice of gameplay as players are asked to collect a number of tickets from various mazes, before gaining access to a carnival.

The key gameplay concept showed off here was turning statues to face a certain direction to unlock gates to advance further through the maze. In the corner of the screen, a beat counter helps players keep track of rhythm, and the statues can only be successfully turned by holding and releasing a button on the beat. The complexity of the maze puzzles increased over the short demo, and the camera does unlock itself from the initial isometric viewpoint to swing around to offer different views of each puzzle.

While that was the main chunk of gameplay we saw, there’s more to come as development continues on the project. You can check out a short snippet of some of the great music in the game in the announcement trailer below: