It’s tempting to call Polyroll a Sonic the Hedgehog clone, but that’s an oversimplification. Gunmetal Arcadia is most notable for its legacy system – the game remembers your last run, and applies modifiers to the character and the dungeon based on how you played and even how you died. The protagonist’s quest is straightforward, but there are a lot of different paths to victory, with hidden story elements and challenge rooms that will put anyone’s platformer skills to the test.īased heavily on Zelda II, Gunmetal Arcadia is a roguelike sidescroller that sees the player delving into an ever-shifting dungeon to slay a notorious monster. Super Win the Game, a follow-up to their popular free title You Have to Win the Game, is an open-world exploration-focused platformer. Minor Key Games are best known as pioneers of the ever-popular faux-CRT effect, but let’s not forget that the games themselves are very good. This makes for a Viking-themed platformer that’s much more technically challenging than most, but for fans of the old-school there’s nothing that recreates the feel of those games quite the same. Volgarr and his enemies move on a fixed grid and Volgarr has a jump with a fixed trajectory that he can only change with his double jump. Far from a mere graphical change, this is a complete second game with different levels and subtly different mechanics to reflect the Game Boy’s limitations.Īnd while we’re on the subject of authenticity, we have Volgarr the Viking, a game that masterfully captures the capabilities and limitations of early platformers. However, the most interesting feature is its secondary game mode based on the Game Boy’s Castlevania: The Adventure. Based heavily on the original Castlevania, Crypt Stalker offers an experience that is authentic and challenging, but also fair. There are few people who can capture the feel of a retro game quite like Sinclair Strange, and Crypt Stalker is a great example. And if anything, the limitations make the game even more eerie, with little red pixel eyes peering out from the shadows and compressed, slightly atonal music setting the mood. Light is a key mechanic in Lulu’s Temple – the protagonist carries a torch which he must use to solve puzzles, which at times means throwing into the darkness and losing its protection. Lulu’s Temple is a great example of how horror can be done in 2D with limited pixel graphics. Each level is modeled after a historical or mythical event in Dracula’s brief reign, with a mechanical and graphical style that resembles classic arcade platformers such as Magic Sword.Īs popular as horror games are these days, it’s a bit surprising that we haven’t seen more horror platformers. Wallachia follows a young noblewomen on a quest for revenge after her family is wiped out in Dracula’s 1456 purge of the Boyars. There aren’t a lot of media properties based on Vlad III Draculesti – the historical basis for Dracula – so Wallachia is really staking out a new path. Publisher: Storybird Studio / Pixel Heart Wallachia: Reign of Dracula Wallachia Reign of Dracula Between that, the Genesis throwback graphics, and the quirky arcade-style level design, you have a game that’s hard to forget.Ģ. Unusually for a platformer, Noitu Love 2 uses both the keyboard and mouse for controls, allowing the player to move and attack in different directions. Suffice to say, a lot of time and effort went into allowing people to buy this innovative platformer for the cost of a slice of pizza. Noitu Love 2 has a long, messy history that we won’t dwell on too much. Bear in mind that the quoted prices are subject to change. So if you’re ever bored at home and want to hop into something that’s a little old-school, try one of these cheap indie platformers on Steam. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way, as the PC is loaded with interesting platformers that can be yours for less than the price of takeout. For the customer, part of it is a matter of price: No one wants to pay top dollar for a game that’s over sooner than expected. It seems like there are more of them than ever, yet it’s harder than ever for the developers to make money. Platformers are in a strange place right now.
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