If you ask me, Medusa gets a bit of a raw deal. No other mythological being is consistently treated like a monster when you get down to it. Thor is pretty much always displayed with his long flowing blonde hair (I know, he’s a bit of a jerk in God of War), and just because her mane is comprised entirely of snakes, everyone turns to stone if they look at her. Like 99% of the women on this planet, she just wants someone to tell her she’s pretty; or in the case of Little Medusa, give her a gold star for effort.

The game follows a cute version of the serpent headed goddess as she collects gold stars and turns her foes into rock in a great NES style throwback. Per the norm back in the days of the great granddaddy to the Switch, there isn’t much of a story once you pass through the title screen, which places our heroine in a wonderfully rendered pixel art map, akin to Super Mario World. Entering the first level sight unseen, I was honestly a bit lost for my first few attempts at the game.

I started in a small area that was made up of a few islands, one of which included the player, a few enemies, and some Super Mario Bros.-ish pipes, with a different island containing a single star. I spent a good five to ten minutes turning the cyclops (which looks like Kirby with a heavy meth addiction) to stone and kicking him into his buddy, only to have their twin brothers fly out of the previously mentioned pipes almost immediately. I repeated this pattern for an embarrassing about of time until I accidentally kicked one of the crack-Kirbys off of the level, which started a path toward the second island. Of course she needed to build a walkway from the corpses of her enemies (so freaking metal when you say it this way). Needless to say, I repeated this process until I made my way to the star, thus finishing the level.

You’ll follow this process through the game’s five worlds (with a mysterious sixth world that is unlocked if you complete the game within a set time) with new mechanics, such as dead areas within the map that you cannot cross or tiles that push you in a set direction at warp speed added regularly. Most of these alternate spaces are common sense based, whereas others are a bit more confusing, such as the water puddles that appear early in the game. I still have yet to figure out how to maneuver around them. Our little snake-headed goddess only has two abilities to her name: throwing a boomerang at the enemies to turn them into stone and dropping a big stone pillar in a specific spot on the board, which blocks the enemies from moving into a specific area. Contrary to the myth, looking at them doesn’t turn them to stone and touching one of the enemies, regardless of the type, results in a swift death.

The retro presentation suits the title well; much like their previous efforts, Mega Cat Studios has full embraced the old school vibe and created something that yet again feels like it was made 30 years ago. The polyphonic toned music really set the mood while I worked my way from puzzle to puzzle, with the graphics often reminding me of the NES version of X-Men, but with a substantially reduced amount of sucking. The difficulty partially contributes to this, with the game offering a pretty substantial challenge that never seems unfair.

The game can be played in one of two modes, with the standard offering unlimited continues and the Olympian Mode being in place for purists, offering only three lives before a game over screen. Outside of this small difference, I noticed no other obvious changes between the modes.

While not nearly as enjoyable as Coffee Crisis, I found Little Medusa to be a respectable retro inspired puzzler, although some may find the current cartridge price point to be a bit on the steep end. Ranging from $49.99 to $125 for the super ultra-amazing collector’s edition (check it out here, I personally would love one just to display it), most gamers would be best holding off for a potential modern console release.

6 out of 10

Pros

• Great Retro Inspired Visuals
• Unique Puzzles
• Interesting Cast of Characters
• Tons of Levels

Cons

• Lack of Player Direction
• Some Mechanics are Overly Vague
• Cartridge Price Point is On the Steep End

Little Medusa was developed and published by Mega Cat Studios. It launched via cartridge in 2018. The game was provided to us for review by Mega Cat via emulation. If you’d like to see more of Little Medusa, check out the official site.

 

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