Developer: Long Hat House
Rrp: £11.99 (Gog.com and Steam), £13.49 (Humblebundle) and £13.99 (Epic Games)
This game is weird, but in a good way. It’s clear that the developers have taken some notes from FromSoftware’s design sensibilities. Killing enemies gives you salt (souls) that you can spend at campsites (bonfires) to improve your stats. The more your stats improve the more expensive it becomes. If you die you return to campsite and where you left is a ghost of you that has all your salt from when you died, die before retrieving it and they’re gone forever. As I said, it’s all very Soulsbourne, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Unlike many games that try to shoehorn those mechanics in it actually works well.
One of the interesting things about this game is that your character can’t move, well at least not in the traditional sense. Dandara, the character in question, can jump from one surface to another regardless of the orientation of said surface. However, once you’ve reached that surface your glued in place and can only move my jumping to yet another surface. The other thing that makes this game interesting are the bosses you end up taking on, there are some rather strange designs that appear. Such as an actual beating heart surrounded by traps or a disembodied head.
This game was a lot of fun from start to finish and the combat was really interesting because of the way the movement influenced it. I heartily recommend this game to those who have a taste for the metroidvania genre.
