In early February 2024, Ukrainian studios N-Hance Studio and Nasty Cat released a demo version of their new game Sharded World: Backpack Adventure on Steam.
Recently, the demo received a big update with animal companions.

Sharded World: Backpack Adventure is, as the title suggests, a spinoff of Sharded World, a Vampire Survivors-inspired game from the same developers that was released in Steam Early Access in February of 2013.

Backpack Adventure was clearly inspired by the popular game Backpack Hero. Here, you also collect your backpack, putting weapons, armor, and auxiliary items in it that affect each other and change the characteristics of the hero in battle. But in Backpack Adventure, the battle is automatic, and you fight in asynchronous mode with bots that represent other players and the combinations of equipment they have created. In addition, the backpacks here have hexagonal blocks, which increases the number of options for placing items.

Sharded World: Backpack Adventure has 4 unique heroes with different abilities; numerous items and recipes to create powerful equipment; runes that need to be composed into various words, adding unique properties to your equipment; a rating system that allows you to test your strength in comparison with other players.

The recent Pet Update added companion animals with unique abilities, 21 new items, a knowledge book, and much more to the game.

You can try out Sharded World: Backpack Adventure yourself by downloading the demo from Steam.