Today I had the pleasure of reviewing this retro-inspired game.
Not knowing what exactly I was diving into, I set out to beat this game and write up a review.
Why not, right? I love retro games, and this one will have an NES port! With my morning wide open, I decided to crack on in.
First, a quick review, followed by a detailed play-by-play of my experience.
REVIEW: 8.5/10
This is a game that very much reminds will remind you of classic platformers for the NES; The one that most comes to mind would be Megaman 2. Its got it all; tight jumps, multiple paths (with multiple paths in each part for powerups), secondary powerups galore, big bosses…but its all reasonable and beatable, even on the normal difficulty (I can’t imagine the hard difficulty).
Getting down to 0 lives will provide you with a very powerful secondary item, helping eliminate frustrating bosses. Extra lives, thankfully, are more abundant than you would expect as well.
Platform lovers rejoice, as single-hit spikes, pitfalls, cheesy enemy spawns and all of the classic tropes we know and love are here and ready to kill you! Checkpoints are somewhat forgiving, and you never have to lose all of your progress as you can simply continue if you run out of lives.
People with young children should be aware that there is more profanity in this game than there is not, but thats to be expected with AVGN and does not take away from the fun factor of this game.
SPOILERS BELOW
Click to expand playthrough (contains spoilers!)
Playthrough:
The game recommends you use a PC Joypad like an XBOX controller; doing so is a great idea, as it implements rumble features.
When starting the game (3 difficulty choices, I chose normal), you are treated to a fun video clip introducing AVGN and the basic story of this game: You must defeat 6 stages in order to glitch out the game and defeat the boss who has infected all video game consoles worldwide.
After the video, you’re presented with an enemy select screen reminiscent of Megaman:
Not knowing what order to play the bosses in (as I figured we’d be getting powerups or something from each boss), I started with “Letule”.
I was immedietly hit with a beautiful, deliciously vibrant landscape, and what appeared to be simple enough platformer gameplay for me to jump right in.
The enemies are not too bad, and there were plenty of blocks that only last for a few frames, scary looking pitfalls to jump over, and enemies that just seemed to want me to die.
There were also a couple of secondary weapons that I was able to activate with X, such as throwing a molotov cocktail of sorts.
There appeared to be powerups for the gun, although every time you get hit you lose one power (which you can pick up again if you’re quick). And if you die, you start over with no power.
With enough luck I made it to the boss. And I prompty got destroyed.
After a few attempts however, I figured out his pattern and took him down with 1 life left. Not bad!
After the level completes, you receive….nothing.
Thats right, nothing except for a password.
Deciding to press forward, that took me to my second level, Festerdrone.
After having worked up some courage and stretched my platformer fingers a bit, I made it through this level without much issue.
That is, until the boss appeared.
I think this one ended up being one of the hardest bosses in the game; his patterns are not easy to avoid, and every time you die your gun power gets reset to nothing. I started to get the hang of his patterns a little, but the missile barrages were brutal. I think I even got it down on one attempt to one hit left before he cheesed me.
This is where I learned a useful trick: when you are down to 0 lives, the game puts a special item in your secondary item slot – A “Golden Pickle” (learned the name through the steam achievement).
This Golden Pickle makes any battle a piece of cake, as the pickle will constantly attack the enemy, drop gun powerups for you, and also drop health replenishments.
Feeling much better about my journey, I continued on through the remaining 4 stages.
The last one I chose tripped me up a few times – I definitely had flashbacks to Airman’s stage in Megaman 2!
After successfully defeating all 6 bosses, you are presented with one final stage to lead you to victory.
Thankfully, 1-UPS are very plentiful here, although you might want to work your way down to 0 lives for the golden pickle for the last fight.
Overall, a very fun experience! You are presented with a video for completion, and you get to enjoy a nice list of all of the enemy names throughout the game in the credits run.
I honestly cannot wait to see how much of this translates over to the NES version!
You can try out the free demo on steam before it’s release on October 23 – 2025