I’m not actually sure when I bought this game, but it’s in my Steam library. It was probably in a Humble Bundle. I saw it being mentioned online as an excellent Metroidvania, so I thought I’d give it a go.
Graphically the game is similar to Shovel Knight. It has a low-resolution pixel art style with a lower colour depth. The characters really stand out with their own separate but equally small palette. This is to replicate the look of the NES I think. It actually reminds me of the ZX Spectrum quite often in fact, and makes me want to play Myth: History in the Making again. That game was a side on platformer where you explore a map which in my mind’s eye looks strikingly similar to this.
There are three characters in the game that you can switch between, each having their own abilities and weapon. At first you can only switch when at save points. Later on you can switch any time you are stood on the ground. This allows access to many more areas of the map.
I liked the game quite a lot. The map is very well designed and I liked the upgrades of the characters. It did feel like there were quite a few bugs I encountered through it though, characters getting stuck and puzzles not triggering anything when they were completed.
About halfway through, when the game starts piling on the upgrades it felt exciting to be racing through the map clearing out areas that I had previously struggled with. I found myself hunting out all of the secrets that I’d not found, chasing down all of the items that I had missed. It’s common for the best Metroidvanias to end up this way, Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid both do this. The fact that I’m mentioning those when talking about this game is interesting though. They really are the high points of the genre to me.