The definition for ‘Difficult’ has changed throughout the history of video games. These days, difficult can be summed up to a choice that you make on at the start of the game about whether you want to play on Easy, Medium, or Hard or it give you an onslaught of enemies to fight with little to no info on the mechanics of the game. Once you learn how the game is played, any death that happens is the fault of the player. Back in the early days of gaming, difficult was endless waves of enemies that could pop out of the ground at any location and just get a free hit on you. This sorta gameplay relies less on learning the mechanics of the game and more about split-second reactions. Battle Princess Madelyn is a great example of this kind of gameplay. This pixelated, 2D, action, adventure, platformer will an endless collection of enemies come out of every section of the screen with little warning. Most of them die in one=hit and the ones that do take multiple smacks won’t just jump out of you. This combined with your starting two-hits before death creates a very difficult game that requires a lot of quick movement and last second decisions to be able to dodge the hit that is coming towards you.
As you progress through the game, you can find upgrades to your weapons and your armor. The upgrades to you weapons make them cover more of the screen, taking out more enemies and dealing more damage. The armor upgrades give you more health, which is very needed as your go throughout each level. As you take out more enemies, they will drop more red and blue orbs along with money. The orbs go to your ghost dog who can do several things with the amount of orbs he has. You can either have him attack an enemies and deal massive damage or you can save them for when you take that last hit on your health-bar and die. The orbs then get automatically used to revive you on the spot. Although, if you happen to die before getting the needed amount of orbs, it is back to the beginning with you, so you have to be careful and be merciless to be able to find the wizard that ruined your life by taking your family and killing your dog. Make him pay.
Download the pre-alpha demo on Steam. or on indiedb.
Check out and back the game on Kickstarter.
Played it? We’d love to know what you thought about it.
