Having grown up in the 80’s, I have a special place in my heart for retro style games. With a number of these hitting digital markets almost weekly, there are tons of options available to the gaming community; however, only a handful of them capture the look and feel of the NES and Genesis. Does Ghoulboy check all of the right boxes, or is it just another pale imitation looking to cash in on nostalgia?

This opens like many of the old school adventure games, using single frames and the token text boxes to bring you up to speed on the history of Gunzabar. The fictional land is under the attack by the nefarious Ghoul King and his minions. Young Thulgar, also known as Ghoulboy, is part of a legend that tells he has the power to vanquish Ghouls from the land for all of eternity. This narrative takes a back seat to the actual game play similar to many popular 90’s franchises.

The levels contain the standard left to right progression, rarely requiring you to backtrack unless you’re seeking out hidden areas or are required to hit a switch to open a path forward. The combat feels inspired by the Castlevania series, using both close combat weaponry as well as limited use projectiles that come in a few flavors. You will have to manage these carefully, as some enemies almost require you to hit them from a distance. In addition to a means to ending the undead, the spear is used as a traversal tool through some brutal platforming. The spear can be thrown at almost any solid structure to provide an additional point of contact for when Thulgar’s double jump isn’t enough. Luckily these are replenished regularly by collecting pick-ups found within enemies, the world itself, hidden chests, and can purchased from one of the many vendors tucked within the levels.

The gameplay is split primarily between combat and platforming, with some mild puzzle solving here and there. The combat feels old school enough to scratch that itch, but is inherently a bit dull simply due to the innovations that have taken place in the past 20 or so years. The enemy patterns don’t pose much of a challenge, since most of the zombies will simply walk to and fro, only attacking when you’re within arm’s reach. There are some more apt creatures that will follow Thulgar, but only so far. The platforming is much more brutal, and likely will be the most difficult aspect of the game for most players. With precise controls and the double jump, I can assure you most of my failures came from either not looking at all of the tools within my belt (case in point, not using the spear as often I should) or simply missing the mark on my timing. The spear mechanic can make this almost too easy at times, allowing large portions of levels to be skipped by (yes, I know this is cheap tactic) simply jumping my way up some walls early into a few of the levels. The puzzles are the weakest link and arguably could have been removed altogether. The vast majority of them require you to hit a switch and backtrack or progress towards a door; the others simply task you with moving object A across a short segment to a pressure plate. The latter of these caused some minor issues for me as I mistakenly pushed a large boulder on to one of these plates with no option to reset it to the original position or move it backwards. This resulted in me having to start the level over in its entirety. You’re given three lives as well as an overly forgiving life bar (that can be replenished quite often at vendors or via pick-ups), and once these are spent, you’ll have to start the level over, forgoing all checkpoints previously hit. Even if you reset the game you’ll lose a life, resulting in some levels being painstaking difficult.

The visuals are hands down one of the best retro throwback tributes I have played in recent memory. The polyphonic music and sound bites sound as if they could’ve been pulled from Zelda or the like. The optional scan lines and faux curving to the edges of the screen really sell that this could have been released on much older hardware. The backdrops and character drops are designed extremely well using the pixelated old school designs of yesteryear, but have their fair share of minor bugs. It was refreshing to never have the game freeze or kick me to the dashboard, but the invisible walls that were found here and there would impede progress and often result in me having to use more of the precious spears that I would’ve liked. The same can be said for a number of enemies who seem to shrug off certain attacks during specific encounters where the same enemy type was previously dealt with using the same method of attack. The controls are the one aspect of the game that felt out of place. Despite being responsive and accessible, the bumper buttons being used to toggle weapon classes feels too modern and reminds you that you are playing on current gen hardware, using more than just a few buttons.

As a throwback, Ghoulboy checks off all of the right boxes, offering an experience that would have felt at home on a console 20 years ago just as well as it does today, despite some minor bugs.

8 out of 10

Pros

• Old School Vibe
• Tight, Responsive Controls
• Forgiving Health/Progression
• The Spear/Double Jump

Cons

• Some Minor Glitches

Ghoulboy was developed and published by Serkan Bakar. It launched on PC in 2017, and was ported by Dolores Entertainment to PS4 and Vita on March 7th, 2019. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Ghoulboy, check out the eastasiasoft’s site.

 

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