Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan
For lack of a better words to describe what this is, this is a JRPG. It also draws on Shonen genre of manga. It has a structure similar to many of the older japanese RPG games. This is a very vague term to use though, because there are a diverse set of games under that category. Regardless, if you have played that sort of game the gameplay outside combat will be immediately familiar. It even has overworld bits where you walk a tiny sprite between towns.
Finally, I say it is Shonen because it is reminiscent of a certain kind of manga and anime for young males. You pretty much play African Goku. You do not pilot increasingly larger robots but you do sorta gain Stands. Whether that appeals to you or not is a matter of personal preference. If you like badarsery, this game has you covered. Very powerful people perform superhuman feats and have very flashy duels after frankly talking about why they have to fight. A young man discovers himself and his place in the world. Lessons are learned. It is that kind of tale.
– Real player with 83.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Retro Fantasy Games.
The story follows young prince Enzo Kori-Odan who is to become king of a peaceful little country Zama, although he is doubting his skills in the first place. On his coronation day he is also marrying his beloved Erine. Future looks bright and full of happiness, what could go wrong? Everything.
Zama finds itself under attack in an attempt of coup d’état and despite great effort from Enzo in defending his people he is defeated. Nama, teacher and master of Enzo, saves the newlywed young couple from the worst case scenario. The king and his queen, who stood by his side, are then exiled. Both of them are for the first time away from Zama and are confronted with harsh unforgiving reality. The difference between Zama and other countries surprised them. World and people around them are full of misery, cruelty, hate and so on. They have to become more powerful to be able to come back home victorious. Their travels across the land will test them, put them on the edge of their strength, to see if they can become the truthful King and Queen of Zama.
– Real player with 36.1 hrs in game
Ampersat
Ampersat is a shooty, slashy, RPG-y game mixing old-school/retro and modern sensibilities. A blend of influences from Gauntlet and Smash TV to Zelda and a dash of Angband, this is a handcrafted adventure with much appeal to fans of Roguelites. A labor of love from a solo developer, Ampersat distills some favorite childhood gaming experiences into a fresh, fun hybrid that sees you killing a lot of monsters, finding a lot of loot, freeing captured letters (um, what?) and growing from a world-weary warrior mage into a powerful smashing/blasting machine!
Main Features
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More than 50 handcrafted levels, many with exploration and light puzzles
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Optional endless procedural area
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Original gameplay elements based around freeing and capturing letters
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Flexible character progression with extensive skill tree
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Hundreds of unique pieces of loot find, buy, sell and augment
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Upgradeable town hub
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Tackle stages in the order you choose
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50 unique creature types with individual AI, 10 fiendish bosses
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Drop-in local async co-op (and online using Steam Remote Play Together) - suitable for young players to team up with their parents
You may notice the main character and enemies are ASCII letters - yes, this is an aesthetic throwback to the original Rogue games, and the blending of these with colorful 3D top-down environments was the idea that first spawned Ampersat. Likewise, Commodore 64 SID chip sound effects are used alongside real-world music for a distinctive experience. But just what is an “ampersat?” It’s the leading contender for the official name of the @ symbol, of course!
Overview
Gentlheim has been invaded by Lord Z, who has surrounded the village with 5 extraplanar towers and the dungeons beneath, filled with evil creatures. Even worse, he has stolen language itself from the townspeople! As the warrior mage Ampersat, you must venture deep into the dungeons and high above the land in the treacherous towers, defeat countless minions and restore language to Gentlheim so the townsfolk can communicate properly and help you defeat Lord Z himself.
Gentlheim
Gentlheim has shops to buy and sell goods; an Inn to heal up, level up, and stash gold to retrieve after death; and a deep Well leading to randomly generated procedural levels. There are various structures you can pay to upgrade and, as language returns to the village, townsfolk who may need something… Gentlheim hides a few surprises for the inquisitive gamer and provides a hub area to approach different stages in any order you like, or revisit levels you’ve already beaten.
The Well is where the “roguish” aesthetics are turned up to 11, providing short, sharp, loot-gathering deep delves once you repair it. There’s an old rumor that something very special is buried at the bottom of the well… but no one has ever reached those depths.
Co-op
Ampersat’s async co-op is true drop-in, drop-out at any time. The second player controls a fairy that hovers around Ampersat and also launches attacks. Will you trust them with your best spell? No? They might steal it anyway… While the fairy’s shots aren’t as powerful and contribute to overheating, it has the huge advantage of being invulnerable. The perfect partner… if you can get along.
Read More: Best Retro Twin Stick Shooter Games.
Super Grave Snatchers
Raise the dead. Kill people. Raise them, too.
There are also spells like fireballs and soul tornadoes, if you don’t want your minions to have all of the fun.
Campaign is not long, but there’s a sandbox mode and a survival mode that you can unlock, also.
– Real player with 12.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Retro Villain Protagonist Games.
Super Grave Snatchers is a short, beautifully retro, necromantically witty and very engaging game.
The controls are simple enough, and fairly intuitive. On higher difficulties, the length of the game makes the creative permadeath fun rather than a chore (I recommend at least 2 Cheat Death items, because you basically have 1 HP). On lower difficulties, well, it’s a blast to just run around necromant-ing everything in sight. :D
As for the musical score - ::chef’s kiss::
– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game
Dawnthorn
Dawnthorn is a topdown, pixel-art ARPG with a character and experience firmly rooted in the 8bit era. It features action-adventure style gameplay. Players will experience hectic, item-driven real-time combat, and solve puzzles and challenges spanning one single room, or the entire game-world! The experience features over 9 unique dungeons, and a sprawling overworld linking everything together, filled to the brim with rich characters, subquests, mini-games, and dozens of secrets.
Players take on the role of a headstrong young archetypal hero who, though from a prosperous time of bounty, has dedicated himself to righting a great wrong committed centuries ago. He comes armed only with fierce will and the promise of youth. Will these alone be enough?
Retro Classix: Wizard Fire
Data East 3
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Songbringer
Do I recommend “Songbringer”? With some time thinking, yes. Yes, I do.
Honestly, it took me some time to get warm with it. The selling point of the game is the gameplay and as a beginner it is really hard to get into it. And as further the story goes, the more unfair passages, where it is impossible not to get hit, you encounter. However, after the first playthrough you might change your opinion, like I did. Give it a shot.
The most obvious game on Steam you can compare it with is probably “Hyper Light Drifter” as it looks and feels the same way. Beyond Steam you’ll see more similarities with the very first “Legend of Zelda” though.
– Real player with 29.4 hrs in game
TL;DR - Songbring exceeded all my expectations. Normally Zelda-esque games disappoint me and make me sad. Songbringer won my undivided attention even though I was working on a paper for my Master’s. Revelling has never been more fun, and with multiple ways to solve various problems, procedural world generation, and alternate endings, Songbringer is a no brainer. Buy it. 8.2/10
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Graphics: Songbringer is retro… but retro in the style of retro on crack. The visuals at first seem kind of interesting but nothing special. Then as you progress in the game, you start to see all the added effects. Particle effects are done extremely well. Night to day effects, death effects, use of special items… all effect the game in a great way and help set the mood.
– Real player with 20.7 hrs in game
Retro Classix: Gate of Doom
Arcade machine classic dungeon crawler - now with unlimited quarters! Let the Knight, Wizard, Bard and Ninja die and die again as you slaughter monsters, collect loot and thwart evil!
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game
Incredible game! worth trying out for any retro fans
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Unending Dusk
Unending Dusk is a decent beat’em up if you enjoy grinding stats and finding rare attack mods. As you can see I dropped over 80 hours just to max out 2 of the 4 characters. I guess you could say that it has some roguelite elements, although there is no perma-death. The stages are randomly generated so you can run into a secret shop or a hidden area, and that is not counting the stat grind which is usually associated with the genre. For me the game managed to capture the nostalgia that I have for classic beat' em ups, despite having all those new features. In my opinion the combat, aesthetic and the controls are faithfully implemented. I play Streets of Rage (2) very often, by comparison the execution of attacks is essentially the same. Unfortunately, it has no grappling which is perhaps my biggest problem. There are definitely some modern features added to the formula such as character levels and different damage types, but overall it truly feels like a game that could be on Genesis - mainly due to aesthetic.
– Real player with 104.7 hrs in game
Unending Dusk is an old-school beat-em-up with ARPG mechanics and a pretty decent, darksynth-esque soundtrack that was admittedly rough around the edges in its early days, but regular updates have smoothed a lot of those edges and made for a compelling cooperative experience whenever I can rope friends into playing it. The developer even does double XP events on occasion. It has up to four-player online coop but regrettably no local option, an odd choice for the genre.
The time and place, a dark cyberpunk future in the last city on Earth. The titular twilight spells impending doom for the city given its reliance on solar power. A brilliant engineer has taken it upon himself to gather a band of the deadliest mercenaries, bounty hunters, soldiers and even religious fanatics he can get to find the source of the unnatural darkness and combat the strange, almost demonic invaders it brought with it.
– Real player with 101.2 hrs in game
Artifact Adventure Gaiden
This game is pretty great. It’s a nice action RPG with a very retro style. The gameplay of building your character and make choices is really engaging, and made it worth playing through multiple times. I was skeptical after playing the first one, because of how different it looks, but it recreated a lot of the same types of fun, and is great addition to the series.
Visually, I’m not a huge fan of the graphics, but I understand they are trying to reproduce the original Game Boy style. For what it is, things are perfectly readable, there was only one spot where I got confused between a wall and a path. After a while it grew on me, and the more complex combat graphics are where it really shines.
– Real player with 81.6 hrs in game
Artifact Adventure Gaiden feels and plays like a classic JRPG. You assemble your team, each party member having a unique game-length quest and abilities. You embark on an open world, whose enemies scale to meet your level whenever you’re out exploring. There are dozens of dungeons for you to find, secret quests to uncover, and the choices you make will directly change how the story pans out.
The combat is basic but fun, the powerups are cool, the armour looks awesome. If you’re looking for a challenge I’d suggest playing on hard, I didn’t grind at all and found myself overlevelled from about halfway through the game onwards. I did seek out as many quests and dungeons as I could though, so if you rush you might be underlevelled instead.
– Real player with 13.9 hrs in game
Binger Ninja
Really enjoyed playing through Binger Ninja!
I love the aesthetics of the game as well as the tongue in cheek humour. The music and visuals really do make you feel as though you are back playing a game boy game.
Seems like the developers have really hit the niche that they were going for which translates to a fun game :)
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
So, you’ve read the description of the game and now you’re here looking for the truth. Watch the video posted above, it’ll give you an intro to the game, gameplay and my thoughts on the game.
Binger Ninja is an interesting oddity in the sense that has way too many mechanics, charm and clarity to be only $1 (USD). I was not expecting so many polished systems, driving narrative and fun gameplay. Do you fancy yourself a ninja? What to crawl through vents and hide behind plants? Do you enjoy attacking people unmercifully with food? Are you hungry right now? A simple yes to any of these questions tells me that Binger Ninja is the game for you. Pick it up now and tell your friends as well.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game