Arwinia

If you are here for the classic Castlevania, the mechanics, controls, and difficulty will feel comfortable. Heart pickups replenish health and gold pickups can be used to buy items at the end of levels. Some items can only be found in hidden areas. Play is linear and some items are essential to progress. If you find you missed something important you can rewind your game to a previous checkpoint from the progress menu. You collect XP to level up which increases your max HP and fully replenishes your health. Which can be a life saver if timed right. When you die the game rewinds to the previous checkpoint and when you run out of lives you can continue from the checkpoint before that. You never have to go back and fight a boss again on continue. Continues are unlimited but you start with only 5 lives, which makes the later levels difficult but fair. This is a pattern based game. The first time through any area or boss fight will be the hardest. It is normal to die several times trying different strategies before finding one that will work. Some areas have instant death platform falls. Combined with knockback they can be challenging if you are new to this type of game play.…

Not a bad game. An unpolished one. Very much the difference between bad developers and inexperienced developers. This game barely reaches "decent". It's...fun. In very much the same way Castlevania is. It's difficult and requires some patience but that was the shtick of Castlevania. The more I play Arwinia the more I realize that the difficult is due to poor polish and if they spend some time tightening things up, it'll be a good game.

It's a fun Castlevania-like. I'm still early in but the controls feel good (after remapping to my taste) and the game has some challenge to it. I would recommend it.

I don't know if this review is helpful because I am comparing this against 1980's games from the 8-Bit era. Arwinia is an straight linear action platformer for this who have played Ghouls n' Ghost. The level designs are straight out of Ghouls n' Ghost than Castlevania, but this time you have a health bar instead of the two hits and your dead. Many sidescroller action RPGs tend to have a Metroidvania like Castlevania 2 Simon Quest or Casltevania as many sidescroller RPG's are. The level designs are straight out of Ghouls n' Ghost, but this time you have a health bar instead of the two hits and your dead. Arwinia like some games from that era they allowed you to collect money "gold" that can purchase stuff I guess to make you stronger in later levels. Its just a basic 8-Bit Platfomer at most than a adventure game.

Being a Castlevania fan i had my eye on this game for awhile. This seemed like it would be a fun game however, i couldn't get past the 2nd part of the first stage. I know Castlevania is a difficult series but, having to hit zombies twice even at level 4 seems like a little much. The platforming on the 2nd part of the first level is pretty hardcore. The game is way to difficult to start out and doesn't ease you into the play style. Sadly after playing for half an hour, I lost interest in the game.