Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan

Sydney Hunter (not to be confused with Sydney Sweeney or Sidney Zitbag) is the archaeologist from a series of homebrew games for older gaming systems. "Curse of the Mayan" is the first one that has been made for digital download, it's much bigger and more elaborated than these ones, but still with the same retro sensibilities. Basically it's a metroidvania-esque platformer where you are in this hub world (a Mayan pyramid) and have to find hidden crystal skulls as tokens to open the way to the areas where the cursed Mayan gods reside and defeat them. Every area also has new items and weapons that can open up exploration even more, for a satisfying gameplay loop where you're incentivized to look into every nook and cranny, while besting deadly traps and picking up gems for buying other useful stuff (hey, ancient Mayans have to eat too). The C64-styled pixel graphics (but with more enhancements such as parallax scrolling) are quite good and so are most of the chiptune BGM, the dialogues between Sydney, the Mayans and the gods are fairly funny and full of references without being obnoxious, the controls are precise, buttons for changing weapon and usable items on the fly are optimal, a…

a great modern throw back to the 8/16 bit era of gaming

A nasty, obnoxious little game, designed to cause maximum frustration and annoyance. I wanted to like this so much.. it's my ideal game on paper - 2d, retro, adventure / exploration platformer.. but in reality it's rendered awful by the high difficulty and deliberately obnoxious game design elements, such as massive gaps between save points - meaning, if you die (and it's very easy to do so), you have to repeat loads of carefully timed platforming, collecting etc. to get back to where you were.. it's horrible. Add to this, the fact saving takes way longer than it should, and that you can't mute the grating chiptune soundtrack (wtf?) and you have a lesson in aggrivation. I hope the devs get locked in a room full of mosquitoes.

The game is generally fun but i don't have the patience for the boss fights. 6/10

Delivers on that cozy old school satisfaction!

lots of fun