Developer: Lizardcube
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £14.99 (Humblebundle, Steam and Epic) and £17.39 (Gog.com)
I remember when I was a kid watching a friend play the original of this game on his Sega Master System. He never let me have a go, though to be honest I can see why, I was a heavy handed child who was quick to anger when thwarted so he likely feared for his control pad’s safety.
It’s now many years later and I finally got to have my go! Hurray!
This game is essentially a metroidvania though, due to some technicalities I hesitate to truly give it that label. The thing with metroidvania’s is that when you gain a power you can easily switch to a different power. In this game that isn’t the case, when you defeat a boss you turn into a monster version of yourself, you can’t change out of this form into another one until you kill another boss or find an altar. However, altars are uncommon and seem to change you somewhat at random.
What this game is though is beautifully animated, it has been entirely drawn by hand giving every character a wonderful sense of personality. I spent ages just watching how the mouse-man’s ears wiggle. Of course, if you want to relive those old days of 8-bit you can quickly change the game to retro mode in the options menu or with the trigger buttons on your control pad. I thought that was quite a nice feature to add especially because you can choose to just change the music or just the sound effects.
Is this game worth £14.99, honestly to me no. Thankfully I didn’t have to pay that, I picked it up when Epic made it free. It’s just a bit too short to justify that cost to me (as I completed it in just under 5 hours), but perhaps your mileage will vary.
