Nakawak: Expanded Color Edition

It's not the worst microvania out there by any means. In fact, jumping around and shooting stuff in an Atari/DOS Metroid was somewhat intriguing. The beeps and bleeps are good for creating a mood and atmosphere but are ultimately repetitive and annoying to endure. While there are branching paths, they are mostly one-way tunnels. It's "okay".

Short and sweet, beat it in about an hour and a half and enjoyed it. Pretty rough around the edges but it all works right and the price is fair. Good for between larger games.

It's not the worst game I've played, but it's also just not particularly good. While it is a full-on Metroidvania, it does so in a rather annoying way: you can easily learn you needed an upgrade after advancing several rooms so you'll need a round trip to get back to it, with very little difference between both trips (there are very few shortcuts and you can get optional pickups along the way, but not enough not to make the back and forth annoying). I dodged a bullet getting the third ability when I did because otherwise I'd have been victim to one of these instances. Rooms are large with infrequent health pickups, but making your way through is mostly about just being patient enough not to get hit (enemy placement is generally fair rather than getting hit blind, I'll give the game credit there). There's four bosses but three of them feel like they're just damage sponges with their attacks being dead simple to dodge once you get the groove going - notably the first taking many tries only because your safe damage windows are so spread out and your health being so low at that point. There's a kernel of decent design in all of them, but they get spoiled by the lack of actual dynamics…

So I actually own this game twice, once here which is only the colour edition, and once on itch.io which includes the original greyscale edition and this edition. Worth pointing out is there are a handful of minor additions to the colour version beyond the colour itself, a few collectables here or there etc, nothing too major. I really like this game, and would urge anyone interested in a short little Exploration platformer to give it a go. Got caught out a few times with minor bugs but with a save state after each and every room it's hard to complain about cheap deaths. You'll beat it in about 2 hours or so, but I think its still worth its full price (which is $7 AUD) but even better if you can snag it on sale.

This one is a rough and short metroidvania. I recommend it!

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