Anzu Castle Gracula

A faithful [i]Simon's Quest[/i] tribute, but if you expect anything more than a NES style game you might be disappointed, it's a very simple game, and a difficult one at that, at least in the first hour, and then the difficulty kinda drops abnormally, mainly because there are no stages that are properly designed to take advantage of all of the power-ups and upgrades, once I got the double-jump it felt like the game got 5 times easier. I assume it's the same version as you can get for free on Itchio from the dev, and to be honest it's probably not worth $5, it needs to be a bit longer IMO for me to feel good about it. My main problem here is that the game is extremely short, even for what it's going for it felt 3-4 times shorter than usual, actually the only reason this game is longer than 45 minutes is because it can be a bit difficult depending on where you go first, it won't hold your hand with exploration and you can easily run into a few corners and then you will have to backtrack...

More of a very polished proof of concept than a complete game, but the presentation and challenge make this one really fun. The bite sized nature made remembering where to backtrack as abilities were unlocked pretty easy and there's always the options to make the boss battles extra tough by ignoring the strength power ups. I only wish there was an option to make the jumps stiff like in the OG Castlevania 2. A Metroidvania where there's discrete levels of a similar, smaller breadth and scope as this game would be kind of neat.

I respect the gumption of someone who releases a qbasic game in 2024

Absolutely lovely little game. I enjoyed every moment of it. Doesn't take too long to beat but certainly offers some nice challenge still!