Some games make my heart bubble up with joy. They remind me of thumbing through tiny, beautiful booklets and tag-teaming tough bosses with friends. Not everyone’s childhood was easy, simple, or happy, but all of us have moments in our lives we look back fondly on and games that briefly bring them back to us.
, and the retro action platformer is finally getting a second chance on PlayStation and Xbox. It was made by Tribute Games, the indie team behind . Before that, they were best known for the puzzle RPG and the run-and-gun side-scroller .
All of the studio’s projects have showcased top-tier pixel-art and a flare for turning the fundamentals of old genre classics into homages that looked great and felt novel. Following 2017's , described early on as “Spider-Man with a gun,” Tribute released , a 2D platformer where you pilot a mech and collect giant medieval weapons. It’s structured like with a stage select screen and boss fights at the end of each level.
It borrows from in that you can exit your mech to navigate parts of the levels as tiny pilot with a grappling hook. It plays like , Nintendo’s one-off side-scrolling experiment that threw Link into tense 2D duels against armored knights. What has that those games don’t is a sophisticated breakable weapon system where you collect swords, spears, axes and other deadly tools as you play, even crafting your own and sharing them online with other players.
There’s plenty of spike pits but no -style knockback hittin.