Darxanadon

Movement on ladders is very annoying. You can't move sideways on them by pressing left or right, but if you press diagonally, you can move left+up, down+right etc. Ladders led to taking damage with me always instinctively expecting them to be programmed competently like a normal game. The game creates other frustrations too. One problem I have with it is that you're armed with such a pitifully short ranged attack. I did later find a ranged attack but it consumes mana and doesn't totally alleviate my issues with the combat. Going in any direction feels like a painful gauntlet. It's a pity, because the game is close to being interesting enough to want to weather through the frustrations, but I had to put it down.

I have played and finished several games, indie or not, inspired by Zelda 2, Faxanadu and Castlevania 2. While this one may not be as good as the games it imitates, it's still a solid entry. Yes, it's rough around the edges, but I finished it, and you know that a game is good whenever you've finished it. The atmosphere is great and in particular the bosses are well made. It feels like a forgotten NES-game. I had a good time with it.

I had a lot of fun with Darxanadon. Like Frank Reynolds, Darxanadon is rather short and rough around the edges, but also teeming with charm and intrigue. The atmosphere is great, outstanding music, awesome character designs, and lovely pixel art in an endearingly retro setting. I particularly liked finding all of the equipment and seeing how it would change my character's appearance and abilities. I also really liked how open ended the protometroidvania style exploration was at times, despite completing it after just a couple of hours or so. It would be nice to see a successor of some kind to this game, or just something similar with a bit more content and polish. We could definitely use more quality Fauxanadus (I just made that up, Faux+Faxanadu... you may use this at your leisure). Anyway, that's basically what Darxanadon is, a short and simple "Fauxanadu," and although there were some minor inconveniences, like the protagonist's strange difficulty with climbing ladders or having to press alt+F4 whenever exiting the game (couldn't figure out any other way to accomplish this), none of that took enough away from the overall experience for me to not have a great time playing through it, and I guess that's what really matters in the end, right? I think it could have been longer and better, but was still well worth my time. So if like me, you have a penchant for NEStroidvanias, and are okay with a bit of a shorter and jankier experience, I would say to definitely give Darxanadon a try. I'm sure glad I did.

Really janky. Constant little quirks and glitches. Terrible controls. Terrible default button mapping, why is confirm the top button? Horrid combat that seems to delight in making you get far too close to enemies that move much faster than you can. First boss is wildly difficult and not in a fun way, just in a frustrating way.

This game is an unmitigated success. It takes some modern map design sensibilities, and applies them to a genuinely convincing retro experience. Oh sure, there's some jank with ladders, there's some weird screen transitions, but these are important ingredients in that real old school recipe. It's scratching a nostalgic itch for me, in a way that very, very few games can.

DON'T BUY! Literally baby's first game with bad controls, bad movements, glitched ladders, poor design, etc...

Darxanadon is a very difficult retro Metroidvania game from Scumhead with heavy inspiration from Faxanadu and Zelda 2 and despite the jank hit boxes, the broken annoying ladders, and that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ POISON HP DRAINING AREA(seriously that area was the absolute worst & most evil thing in the whole game X_X), I can't argue that I really enjoy this game and worth the 99 cents :D