Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom

I entered the Wonderboy/Monsterboy franchise at Dragon’s Trap [DT]. Which, as far as remakes that are true to form go, is nothing short of excellent. DT did have its problems. The Cursed Kingdom [CK] by contrast does not the take the leap in improvement as DT had with its source material. The game play has been smoothed out a bit since DT but, the game does not look or play anywhere near as smoothly as the demo video shows. The CK intro video has the feel of Saturday morning cartoon; I wish Game Alteir and FDG kept with the adventure cartoon mood and atmosphere. It is extremely unfortunate that in the art style and character design have taken their inspiration from mobile games circa farmville. An in game pop-up add for tokens would not look out of place in the Cursed Kingdom. Character animations are stilted; as if they have don’t have enough frames for movement. The starkest example of this is when the frog is swimming: he looks like a piece of paper being slid across the screen. Hit boxes are awkward in a whole new way in CK. Sword strokes have a habit of phasing through enemies and the shield requires precise alignment for it to be effective. Likewise, animorphing between hero forms is not as smooth as shown in the demo video. You select abilities, items, and characters via multiple circular menus. By the last quarter of the game, menu selection makes the game play cumbersome. Lastly, the music is a filled out rehash of old tracks and, although the banjo renditions were pleasant, the music composition felt a bit lazy. I still very much enjoyed this game. The greatest strength of CK is the puzzle platforming design which, although not overly unique, provides a challenge and is fun. CK is just not worth the 40$ price tag. 6.5/10

I was playing for long 26 hr and dont finishes the game, im still trying and when more i play more i wanna play.

Yes I will most likely finish this. There are many issues that I just hate: 1) Blocking is automatic, you will legit not know if your character will block a fireball, it's automatic and probably dependent on an angle, god knows what it is inconsistent and clunky. 2) Movement is clunky and so is striking, this doesn't feel modern at all, such a shame. 3) Platforming, the dev is a confirmed sadist, tons of platforming underwater and the currents require PERFECT joysticks and jumps include the volcano area. 4) Respawn is pain, you will enjoy figuring things out a bit, but mostly you will just hate this nonsensical sadism that masquerades as a metroidvania, just because it's pissing you off doesn't mean it's doing well. This is nowhere as refined as any of the fine metroidvanias outthere like Hollow Knight and Dead Cells. You will have to walk far if you miss the volcano portal. The map doesn't update which area is complete, it shows overall progression and whatever is left is just left as is. Objectives completed aren't checked, you cannot track what you missed. 5) Jank mechanics just to fill the game up, such as the toad's tongue, that misses a lot due to painful inaccuracies. The game should be hard combat wise and combat is overly simplistic and not fun, parrying being automatic is a huge negative. I love the concept, the execution takes so much away from this game. You don't have to fill every area with bats... For god's sake, the combat isn't rich enough to handle these annoying things. You have to dance around them to not lose HP, it's not fun, there is nothing else that you can do. If only combat was well designed. Essentially this is just a puzzles game. Nice idea for transformations lots of areas are overly repetitive and it gets so unfun, especially the temple and volcano. The game's combat should be redesigned to reward parrying and it should be manual.

When I first bought this game, it worked fine, but like some others posted here, it's too hard and really nothing like any of the classic Wonderboys. I had played it with my Linux box. I decided to try it again, but now I just get black windows and nothing ever starts. Oh well, not worth the trouble anyway.

i got to the town and there there is no way to proceed. i hope to see the full version released here.