What? Another retro looking indie 2D platformer? That sure sounds refreshing, am I right? But don't worry, La-Mulana couldn't be any more different from those typical hipster indie platformers, that try so hard to be different, deep, meaningful "are-we-art-yet?" projects. La-Mulana is just Metroidvania done right. This popular subgenre is getting lot of love from players, but not that much love from the developers. Latest Metroidvania example would probably be Dark Souls, which despite it's 3rd person RPG hack&slash mechanics has strong Metroidvania backbone. I'm actually mentioning Dark Souls for a reason. If you never heard of La-Mulana you can just imagine 2D version of Dark Souls with Indiana Jones theme and some pretty heavy puzzles thrown into this mix. La-Mulana is challenging and unforgiving game that doesn't hold your hand. You'll die a lot, you'll get desperate and you'll be forced to pick up actual notebook to jot down and even draw some clues. But you'll love it. You'll be slowly getting better and you'll learn to anticipate traps and figure out puzzles and enemy patterns. You'll slowly get better equipment, you'll get better in your attacks and transform into experienced treasure hunter much like Indiana Jones. But once you'll begin to feel at home in these vast ancient ruins one of the midboss or boss fights happens and you'll be quickly reminded how dangerous exploring can be. If you still think price tag is bit steep for 2D indie game, bear in mind La-Mulana isn't some 2 hour long retro looking experiment, it's a fully-fledged and extensive game that outlasts pretty much every AAA title released in past few years. Your first playthrough will EASILY be 30-50+ hours. La-Mulana was made with extreme amount of attention to the detail and level design is full of secrets, challenging puzzles and -forgive me for using that word- really epic bossfights. If the video games were developed with even 10% of passion that was put into La-Mulana world would be a better place.
