Amazing Princess Sarah

Amazing Princess Sarah, developed and published by Haruneko Entertainment, is a throwback to the era of challenging 2D action platformers, built with the kind of punishing design and tight repetition that defined the genre in the 8- and 16-bit generations. On the surface, it looks like a lighthearted fantasy romp: a princess sets out to rescue her father, King Kaleiya, who has been kidnapped by the demon queen Lilith. Yet beneath its playful premise lies a game that demands patience, precision, and persistence, offering an experience that rewards mastery through trial, error, and endurance. It wears its influences proudly, invoking memories of Castlevania and Ghosts ’n Goblins, while injecting enough personality and unique mechanics to carve out its own small identity in the crowded retro-inspired landscape. The gameplay structure is classic and straightforward. You move from left to right through enemy-infested castles, leaping over pits, smashing monsters with your sword, and collecting gems and hearts for health and experience. Sarah’s primary tool is her sword, a weapon that, while reliable, requires close-range combat and careful timing to use effectively. Her movements are deliberate, and every attack or jump carries weight—something that feels intentional given the game’s old-school DNA. The signature twist, however, comes from the game’s corpse-throwing mechanic. When enemies fall, Sarah can lift their bodies and hurl them as weapons, and these corpses often have special effects depending on the enemy type. Tossing a burning monster creates an arc of flames, while throwing an explosive one detonates on impact, making this mechanic as tactical as it is darkly comedic. This feature adds a layer of depth to an otherwise familiar formula, encouraging players to think strategically about which enemies to use and when to use them. The game’s design philosophy is unapologetically brutal. Each level introduces new hazards and enemy types that force players to adapt quickly. Health upgrades are rare, checkpoints are sparse, and death means starting again from the beginning of a section, reinforcing the sense of progression through perseverance. The bosses, each waiting at the end of their respective castles, serve as climactic tests of everything learned in the preceding levels. They are large, well-animated, and challenging without feeling unfair once you recognize their patterns. The satisfaction of finally toppling one after repeated failures captures the same thrill that fueled classic arcade and console action games of decades past. It’s an experience defined not by accessibility, but by the satisfaction that comes from learning through defeat and persistence. Visually, Amazing Princess Sarah embraces its retro roots with colorful pixel art and a charmingly exaggerated aesthetic. The environments are composed of gothic castles, dark dungeons, and fiery caverns, rendered in clean but simple sprites. While the visual variety isn’t vast, the game’s art direction carries enough personality to remain appealing. Sarah herself is a stylized figure—muscular, expressive, and immediately memorable—a deliberate subversion of the delicate princess archetype common in older games. The soundtrack, featuring a mixture of energetic chiptune and rock-inspired melodies, complements the action well, keeping the pace lively and amplifying the tension during boss encounters. The presentation as a whole captures the spirit of retro gaming without feeling derivative or soulless, though some might wish for more polish or variety in the backgrounds and enemy designs. Beyond the main campaign, Amazing Princess Sarah extends its lifespan through a creative New Game+ system that unlocks after completion. These additional modes alter gameplay in fun and challenging ways—such as “Drunk Sarah,” which distorts the camera with swaying movement, or other variations that modify physics or enemy behavior. They add replay value for those who have already mastered the main game, though much of the content remains the same. For some, these alternate runs offer an amusing extension of the experience; for others, they may highlight the repetition in the core design. Still, it’s a thoughtful addition that fits the developer’s ethos of squeezing every drop of challenge and entertainment out of its tight framework. Despite its charm, Amazing Princess Sarah has flaws that keep it from reaching the heights of the classics it emulates. The difficulty, while a deliberate design choice, can feel uneven, with sudden spikes that test reflexes more than skill. The controls, though responsive, occasionally feel stiff during complex platforming segments, and knockback from enemy contact can lead to cheap deaths in cramped spaces. The linear level progression also means that once you’ve seen the first few environments, you’ve experienced most of what the game has to offer visually and mechanically. Yet these shortcomings don’t overshadow its appeal—they simply reinforce the fact that this is a game built for a specific audience: players who crave challenge and have the patience to endure it. Ultimately, Amazing Princess Sarah succeeds as a labor of love—a small, independently crafted homage to an era when games were unforgiving but deeply rewarding. Its combination of familiar swordplay, inventive corpse-throwing mechanics, and nostalgic aesthetics gives it enough charm to stand out from the flood of retro indie releases. It’s not revolutionary, nor does it try to be; instead, it’s content to deliver a focused, demanding experience that celebrates persistence over perfection. For players who grew up on the punishing yet satisfying difficulty curves of early console platformers, Amazing Princess Sarah will feel like a welcome return home. For others, it may serve as a reminder that sometimes, the simplest stories—about a princess, her sword, and her impossible quest—can still offer the purest kind of adventure. Rating: 6/10

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I don't think the dungeon levels look interesting. There are a lot of palette swaps for monsters. I've beaten the game and played through as other characters, but it seems to make everything harder with every cycle, to the point of tedium. I like the gimmick of fighting by throwing enemies at characters, and that never gets old, but it's straining against the bulk of the game.

Don't really recommend this one but liked some of it so don't want to thumb it down. Its hard, gets harder and you got to beat it a lot of times to get the true end and it ain't worth it. First run was good the rest is nuts.

Bad

I got this on sale, and it ended up being a lot more fun than I expected. It's exactly what it says on the tin - platforming challenges, killing enemies, and then picking up and tossing those enemies at other enemies. Tossing enemies almost always does more damage than your sword, and a few enemy types have additional effects upon hitting either another enemy or the floor/wall/ceiling. There are also additional items scattered around to grab and toss, so you'll be doing the grab-and-toss a lot. Bosses are interesting, and require little more than the pattern memorization you'd expect from oldschool platformers like the Mega Man games. A couple are tricky, though. Hint - bosses always leave you a safe space during moves that seem to take up the full screen. It's just figuring out where that space is. I'm not particularly good at that, so if I can do it then almost anyone can. It's fun, requires a bit of thinking(especially on bosses), and doesn't overstay its welcome. Oh, and the soundtrack is nice. Simple, but fitting. Now onto the 1 potential negative - Some of the achievements are total BS, so if achievement hunting is your thing, you'd better be a lot better at the game than I am if you want to get them all. I will never understand why achievements matter, but I know they do for some people, so figured I better mention this for completeness.

Well, I bought this game about two or three years ago, if I remember correctly, and back then, it wouldn’t even launch. I was about to refund it, but I thought, "Hey, the trading cards are worth something, I can at least farm those and get some of my money back.” I checked forums and guides, and nothing worked. The game just wouldn’t start. Then in November 2024, I saw it got an update. I was like, "No way, you finally patched it?” So I gave it another shot. And honestly, from the cover it looks like it could be some kind of hentai game, but it’s not that at all. It’s just a very basic platformer. You go from point A to point B, fighting enemies and bosses. Pretty straightforward. You get to the end thinking, "Alright, done. Let’s check the achievements,” and they’re awful. It’s basically replaying the game with handicaps. That’s it. And I was like, "Nah, no thanks.” So yeah, it’s not total garbage, but it’s definitely not good either. I wouldn’t recommend it, there are way better platformers out there. It gets repetitive, and there are moments where you wonder what the hell the developers were thinking.