This is the remaster/remake of the classic Spelunky (which you also get as an extra among other goodies). The main objective is to explore a sprawling cave system full of danger and mystery to collect as much treasure as possible. There are 4 biomes in the cave (and a secret one), each harder than the previous, with distinct traps, enemies and secrets. Sounds simple, but it's actually a quite complex game, that pushes high risk high reward gameplay in every facet of the game. The basic gameplay is a standard 2D side-scroller platformer. The player character controls well, the jumping is consistent. You can use it to jump on the enemies Mario style, or use your trusty whip or other weapons. Every time you die you loose all your progress, only your stats are being kept recorded. Let's continue with the stages. There are usually 4 stages in each zone, made out of destructible tiles. The stages are random generated from prebuilt rooms with a path calculated from the entrance to the exit, ensuring the stage can be completed. Along the way are treasures and a colorful bunch of foes, with a variety of attacks and movements, ranging from simply walking towards the player and dealing one damage on contact (which is already a huge blow, because the player starts with 4 health points), to wildly jumping and teleporting around, instantly telefragging the player. Each zone has its own roster of enemies (with some overlaps), continously increasing the challange. You can also try to obtain a golden idol from traps, which you also have to carry to the end of the level if you survive the trap guarding it, but rewards you with a large amount of money. There are also rare variations of zones and hidden stages, with unique terrain generation and unique enemies, who drop a large amount of loot or special items if defeated. At the end of the game (in the rare case you get there) you will be evaluated based on the amount of loot you've acquired. There are also NPCs, who can help you on the adventure. Damsels grant an extra life point on exiting the stage while carrying them (alive), helping hands try to help you by killing enemies (and most likely they will kill you instead accidentally). The ones with the most systems are shopkeepers. You can spend your hard earned money on items and weapons in their shops to help your run. Or you can rob them, take all their items for free, and prepare for the consequences. As I wrote before, the core of the game is putting the player in situations where they have to evaluate whether to take to safe route, or take a risk. Everything is trying to kill you, including the stage itself, but the challenge doesn't feel cheap or unfair (well, rarely does). The presentation is cartoonish, which empahasizes the game's humor, and dampens the impact of the sometimes pretty brutal violence. It takes inspiration from classic games, and a good chunk from Indiana Jones too (just look at the main character). The music is memorable and doesn't get annoying even when you hear it for the 100th time. I really like this game, I probably put like a 100 hours into it, I managed to beat the true boss of the game and I never got bored. It's addictive. Just one more run and I will beat it, just one more run and I won't blow up myself with my own bombs. Just one more run. It misses some updates from the steam version, like achievements, but I never felt anything was missing from the game. Never touched the multiplayer side, so I can't comment on the fun factor of that, but the singleplayer is worth it in itself. If you like adventure, mysteries, platforming, and restarting a lot of times, you will probably like this game. A true indie classic.
As the title says, it's a fun game, but 25 euros is way too much for it. The gameplay is the classic beat-em up formula, the controls are responsive and the punching (and kicking) feels good. There are 3 playable characters, each with different moves. No complaints on this front. The presentation is also good, the pixelart is stylish and invokes the look of classic arcade games really well. I think the animations are a bit stiff sometimes, but nothing really bad. The music fits the game, nothing more, nothing less. My problem is with content and variety. Enemy variety is fine, but everything else is lacking. There are only six stages, with nice presentation, but their theming is really cliched (not necessarily bad), with minimal stage interactions. I recount only a few times, where I could damage enemies with something other than my fists and feet. You walk forward, hit baddies for six quite short stages and that's it. There is also a Street Fighter 2 style bonus stage, which I don't count as one. There are no interesting or meaningful unlockables either. I'm not the best player in the genre, and even I managed to beat the game on normal just under an hour, with no continues. I know that the main draw with beat-em ups is playing it again and again, but there is nothing here that pulls me back for another round. All in all, it's a competently made game with a few highlights, but 25 euros is way too much for what's on offer here. Get it on discount.
A pretty good comedy adventure game. The story is a really simple one, that pokes fun of fantasy and point-and-click game cliches. Nothing groundbreaking, but it got a little laugh quite few times out of me. The characters are in the same shoe, they are archetypes, but with enough personality, that you care about what's going on. On the presentatin side, the backgrounds still look great, the stylish lighting and rendering gives them a kind of dreamy look, full of life and cheerful colors, invoking ancient legends. Especially the forest areas bathing in yellow lightrays, I really liked those. The character models show their age more, but they are still acceptable. The music is good, fits the mood every time, doesn't become annoying on repetition, brings the magical feeling. I could not remember any of them after closing the game tho. The gameplay is the standard point-and-click variety; look around the rooms, find items, combine them and solve puzzles, talk to NPCs. Executes it well for the most part. The puzzles are not hard for most of the part, there is no monkey wrench puzzle. There is also a handy highlighting system in place, that show all the interactible objects in a room when space is held down. The game contains the player to small areas usually, and gives them clear goles, so you won't get lost while trying to find the way forward. Also, after completing a section, the game takes away all the items you won't need anymore. And you can also save whenever and whereever you would like, which is kind of expected, but still nice. However, there are a few annyoing decesions that take away from the enjoyment: - You can not pick up sometimes an item, until it is revelaled in the story, that you will need it. It feels like artificial padding, when you have to walk to another room to pick up an item, that you could have and would have picked up already, if the game didn't stop you, just to send you back some time later. Items also appear sometimes in rooms without telling the player that they appeared. Kleptomania is a core part of the adventure game experience, I don't know why the devs decided to combat in these slight ways. - Because of the previous point, the game feels extremely linear, unlike classic adventures, where atleast you can hord all the items in the world, and sometimes be ready to solve a whole chain of puzzles with the stuff you already collected. The small sections don't help either. - Double clicking skips dialouge and transition between rooms (thankfully), but most animations can not be skipped (as far as I know), so you are forced to watch them every time you try to solve a puzzle that involves a lenghty animation. By the end, I felt like the devs ran out of time or money, because the ending feels kind of abrupt. Not bad, but I expected a bit more. All in all, I know the second part of this review may sound negative, but I would still recommend this game to those, that like classic Lucasarts style adventure games. Took me around 13 hours to complete it (I did not rush) and I was not bored. Just don't expect something revolutionary.
