Aleya’s Ascent

Aleya’s Ascent

Explore the mountain, save the world.

Play as Aleya, the girl chosen by fate and circumstance to enter the ancient mountain temple city and tame feral long forgotten deities in this 2D precision platformer from Ursa Minor Games, a one person dev team. Explore the mountainous region to find ancient obelisks and hidden shrines with passages, collectibles and abilities while overcoming platforming challenges, punishing creatures, and everything else in your path.

The controls start simple and accessible—Just run, jump, climb, and fight—and grow with each unlocked ability until you’re gliding, dashing, and zipping around The Mountain, with fast respawns so that every death is a lesson.


Read More: Best Metroidvania Side Scroller Games.


Aleya's Ascent on Steam

Bad Pad

Bad Pad

A very nice hard-yet-fair platformer with tight and responsive controls. Overall a very polished game with an amusing story, great art and sound track.

Some levels were pretty brutal but were made more forgiving with the many save locations. I played through on the easiest difficulty level and found it to be a quite a challenge. It’s not rage quit inducing although some levels I found myself attempting many times before finishing them and the satisfaction of completion was gratifying.

Total playthrough to beat the final boss was around 20 hours. Someone with more experience with hard platformers (and better coordination) could do it in a lot less time.

Real player with 64.0 hrs in game


Read More: Best Metroidvania Side Scroller Games.


One of the key recommendation for this game is:

If you’re stuck, or encounter a bug, or found anything unreasonable, you can expect to get reply from the developer very fast (less than 24 hrs in my case).

Now, talk about the game:

The good part is that the game is actually a bit different than what you will expect. There are certainly some differences compare to other platforming/metroid game (unfortunately I can’t go into much details without spoiling it).

However, before you buy it, be warned that the game is actually far more challenging that what it looks like. There are more than just metroid/platforming level. At later end of the game the level is not only very long without much saves in between but also get very very challenging.

Real player with 15.3 hrs in game

Bad Pad on Steam

How About Spikes

How About Spikes

Well, the Music is pretty good though.

Real player with 8.3 hrs in game


Read More: Best Metroidvania Side Scroller Games.


Es ist so ziemlich Dark Souls nur spielt es in Bielefeld

Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

How About Spikes on Steam

Pulse Jumper

Pulse Jumper

Met the Dev during a Gaming Event and gave me a free copy.

10/10 Game play and sick music.

This game deserves to blow up

Real player with 5.2 hrs in game

Somewhere around the first few seconds of the game, you’ll feel like Pulse Jumper is screaming in your face that you aren’t up for the challenge. But you also know from those first few seconds that there’s a chance you can and so you stick with it. A chance you can aim and fire every shotgun blast perfectly, a chance you can hop between every projectile, and a chance you will stick every chasm jump. When you squeak through another sequence of hazards and get to the end of a level, you know you’re going to keep fighting until you beat the whole damn thing.

Real player with 2.6 hrs in game

Pulse Jumper on Steam

Pyxel Knight

Pyxel Knight

Be the Hero!

The King has declared,“He who marries another kingdom’s princess shall rule the land” Try to win the hearts of the stubborn picky princesses trapped in dangerous dungeons full of dubious enemies, surprising traps, bountiful treasure, frightening bosses and more! Pyxelaria needs heroes and now it’s your chance to shine.

In this pixel art co-op Metroidvania-Maker game get ready to Jump, Slash and loot enemies to earn and find badges to power up your player.

The current list of features are as follows:

  • Co-op: 1-4 player Co-op. Go on an adventure yourself or with friends.

  • Use 20 different Tiles to create your own custom campaigns to share.

  • Defeat 4 different enemies or place them in your campaign.

  • Collect 5 Unique Badges or hide them as secrets in your own campaign.

  • Earn Badge Points by finding them and defeating enemies to equip badges.

The game is in development so there is more to come! See the Early Access page for more details about upcoming features.

Pyxel Knight on Steam

Reina and Jericho

Reina and Jericho

Caught unprepared and unarmed, Reina must find a way to rescue a prisoner and break out of the underground fortress they are both trapped within. Carrying a powerful artifact she didn’t know existed, she must master its abilities and defeat the evil tyrant standing before her freedom before it’s too late.

Find powerful artifacts through exploration or by defeating adversaries. Travel back through time to previously impassable obstacles and overcome them with the knowledge and abilities Reina has acquired. Create the perfect chain of cause and effect. Find a Way.

  • Explore multiple environments, time-travel, and the impact different choices have on the future

  • Solve time-bending puzzles that rely on the player’s ability to manipulate cause and effect

  • Fast-paced melee combat that allows for expressive play by combining Reina’s diverse combat abilities

  • Exciting platforming action

  • A touching story about love, loss, and finding the strength to push forward

  • Player-influenced story developments, a built-in randomizer, and speedrun mode provide endless replayability

  • Original piano-driven soundtrack with acoustic and synthetic instruments

Reina and Jericho on Steam

Whim

Whim

Step back in time to a world where colours were few, animation was slow, and everything had a distinctly ‘blocky’ feel. Apparently disregarding most of the last 30 years of advancement and innovation, Whim is a classic ’80s platformer like grandma used to make. Just much, much bigger.

Not the Welcome I Expected

Whim has just returned to his castle home after a much-needed break. As the sole assistant to Sir Leonard Fawkes, the renowned researcher and portal expert, he has had very little time to himself for the past 8 years. Arriving into the castle bailey, Whim discovers that things are not quite as he left them. The normally bustling courtyard is eerily quiet, the air feels heavy, and strange swirling orbs are now dotted about the place. The few people that Whim can see appear to be in some kind of trance, and he can’t shake the feeling that he is in danger. He needs to find Leonard.

What’s in the Game?

  • Proper old-school 2D platforming. Walk and jump. That’s it. At the start, anyway.

  • Travel from room to room as your freely explore the vast castle, avoiding the various baddies and other hazards, as Whim tries to piece together what’s going on. And collect stuff too.

  • There’s no attack button so rein in that killer instinct. Whim’s no fighter - he’s a researcher’s assistant.

  • Beware of falling too far. It actually hurts more than some games would have you think.

  • The castle is just the beginning. Embark on an epic adventure spanning over a dozen diversely themed worlds.

  • Surprises around every corner. Well, not every corner. If they were around every corner they wouldn’t be surprises any more. But surprises around many corners. Some, at least.

  • Find Gizmos to expand your repertoire, such as the Afterburner, Neon Slacks, Pegagus Wing and Marblyzer™ [warning: use of gizmos may involve pressing other buttons].

  • Meet friendly characters who might want you to do stuff for them in exchange for goodies. Some sort of quests to do on the side. Side quests, I suppose.

  • An entire soundtrack of weird but slightly funky adaptations of classical works, such as Mozart’s Turkish March and Boccherini’s String Quintet in E Major.

  • Find all the many secrets hidden amongst the sprawling worlds. If you do, something nice might happen.

Whim’s Weird and Wonderful Worlds

Whim will visit many other worlds on his journey. Here are just the first four.

Sugar and spice and all things nice - that’s what this world is made of. Saccharine Ridge is a naturally-formed confectionery wonderland, consisting of various sweet-themed features such as mint forests, chocolate hills, candy caverns, honeycomb beehive and an enormous sponge cake, to name a few. This place gives new meaning to the land of milk and honey.

Towering some 100 metres above a wide blue ocean, these two towers house a car factory always working overtime. While one tower contains the assembly line itself, the other consists of various offices handling the running of the business. Camshaft Highrise also includes a loading dock below the building and scrapyard out the back, as well as a figure-8 test track suspended in the sky, looping around the two skyscrapers.

The gold rush never ends in this frontier; mainly because the stuff is practically everywhere. Fortune Junction is a prospector’s dream, consisting of a vast tract of desert and a mine shaft where precious metals can be literally picked up off the ground. It also contains a thriving Wild West-style town and bustling casino. It doesn’t matter if you lose – just grab another fistful of gold off the street and keep gambling!

On the perpetually darkened banks of a moonlit lake nestles a quiet village. Its quiet is not one of tranquility, however, but terror. Twilight Shore is a haunted realm filled with all manner of ghoulish creatures. A gothic cathedral, dwelling of the world’s more frightening denizens, stands ominously on a hill above the village, while in the depths of the murky lake many more horrors await.

Whim on Steam

Binky’s Trash Service

Binky’s Trash Service

Dude, for $3, this game is well worth the money.

Real player with 5.8 hrs in game

ondy the voices are still in my head

Real player with 5.3 hrs in game

Binky's Trash Service on Steam

Elly

Elly

great game so far, movement really enters a new dimension of fun once you unlock some of the upgrades. art looks sick and the structure is great

Real player with 4.6 hrs in game

This game is really cool! Props to the developer for making such an interesting world to explore. The creepy/beautiful art is honestly a treat to look at. so much of the odd little art littering the game is fun to take in. some of the characters are cute(sleepy fox 3), some are pretty normal, and others straight up give me chills! the characters even react to your progress and move spots around the map to talk to each other, giving the world an alive feeling.

the backgrounds are really well done, especially beautiful later (lookin at you Spec). But wow! can you believe this is all hand drawn?

Real player with 3.8 hrs in game

Elly on Steam

Million to One Hero

Million to One Hero

I am having fun with it, but don’t get your hopes up for new levels being made. I had this game for about 1 1/2 months and have only seen 1 other person make 2 levels (the game has a lot of older levels though). Also, I have like 3 to 4 people clear the levels I have made (only can see who has cleared the level and not failed it.) , and people can’t up vote a level until they have cleared it.

You can also increase your rank by doing task in other players levels ( kill baddies with a bow, or collect orbs), but the rank doesn’t seem to do anything that I am aware of. Good luck trying to get a task done though if players don’t use certain things in their levels.

Real player with 267.4 hrs in game

Another underrated lever editor platformer, Million to One Hero hits a great balance of fun platforming and adventure-based story. While the editor can take a bit to learn, it has a few key additions that separate this game from other level editors, such as NPCs and dialogue. It also features an adventure creator, where you can string multiple levels together to make a larger story.

As is, Million to One Hero is a solid level editor game, and while it could use a bit more work to make it great, it is certainly one worth checking out and I heartily recommend it.

Real player with 16.3 hrs in game

Million to One Hero on Steam