What do Dark Souls, Super Monkey Ball, Shadow of the Colossus, and Minecraft have in common? They are all explicit inspirations for The Canon of Balls, a spooky and unforgiving new open world platformer in which you are a horrified statue's face with a fleshy pink tongue, floating inside a rolling cage. You can use your tongue as a springboard.

Look, stay with me on this. I think The Canon of Balls could be good. Yes, I know that we've done "Dark Souls in a ball" already this month, but I think this game stands apart. It reminds me a little of Straftat in being a very specific, even obstinate throwback project that's less about nostalgia, more the feeling that a deserted vein of weirdness has a little more to give.

I've just had a go at the opening area, in which you have to rumble and wall-jump around the inside of a cathedral to nab a key from an enormous dangling brazier. I bounced off the brazier, inches from the prize, and quit the game in outrage… but I can feel it pulling me back. I can feel its hook in my flesh. I want to roam the unfriendly, cyclopean world beyond the window slits. Perhaps I'll bring a friend, so I at least have somebody to swear at, the next time I fall off a ledge. The Canon of Balls is fully singleplayer friendly, with no dedicated co-op mechanics, but devs Helios Monk do encourage you to play in company.

It's going for a particular kind of abrasive. The rising, falling whisper of your metal prison against the stone, the constant whirling of the hoops past your eyes – these stimuli build a fatigue that is briefly dispersed by the sturdy dink of landing exactly on the platform you were aiming at. The whole "stone faces with tongues" setup feels like it's more about good old grotesqueness, than any kind of post-ironic brainrot thing.

The devs claim to have created a "non-repetitive, non-modular open world" by dint of refusing to "build a modular 'copy and paste' kit to craft our levels." I'd like to hear from other level designers about the reasoning, there. With regard to the cited influences, I can definitely feel From Software in the knotty grandeur and gloom of the architecture – later, there appear to be rotating blade traps, for the Sen's Fortress survivors amongst us. You can perhaps see Fumito Ueda's thumbprints in the organic and somewhat obscure nature of those early platforming routes. And more obviously, in the presence of a huge stone bird with a key in its talons. I hopefully don't need to unpack the Super Monkey Ball connection.

As for Minecraft, the devs have spelled it out a little. "Our premise was the good old days of playing Minecraft parkour maps and talking about all kinds of things while you struggled together," they write. "You can be competitive and see who reaches a collectible first, or play more cooperatively, navigating together and waiting for each other. The freedom is in the hands of the group, and we can't wait to see how you all choose to play it. The word 'co-op' might be a bit stretched for our game, as there are no real mechanics that require multiple players—it all works solo. However, the true social moments are what make this experience so special."

Love 2 share the thrill of being a face in a ball in a temple hung with tiny little ledges. The Canon of Balls is out today on Steam. It is also very affordable, at $3.39, €2.97 and £2.88 with a launch discount.