Dragon Dragon Fire Fire Deluxe

Played the demo quite a lot. Awesome game - for coop or in between games, e.g. when waiting for your friends to join the evening session :)

A retro game that feels like something you would have played in an arcade, with simple controls focused on movement, jumping, and firing. It delivers plenty of nostalgic charm without being weighed down by modern gameplay mechanics. The only real modern feature is the addition of screen filters that recreate the feeling of watching the game through an old TV or arcade cabinet display. When it comes to gameplay, there are eight worlds that you progress through in order, though each one can be replayed anytime after being unlocked. Every world contains around 20 stages, with each stage taking place on a single screen. The goal is simple: defeat all enemies using your dragon, which attacks by shooting fireballs. There is no limit to how often you can shoot, but there is also no auto fire or option to hold the button down for continuous shooting, so your button-mashing skills matter. The jump mechanic feels solid but not especially powerful, meaning you often need to look for openings and use the environment to your advantage. One of the most interesting mechanics is screen edge traversal, where you can enter from one side of the screen and appear on the other, or fall through the bottom and return from the top. Not every stage includes this feature, so you will sometimes need to rely on other strategies, such as shooting upward, which feels surprisingly satisfying, or destroying boxes beneath certain platforms to make them fall. These falling boxes can take out enemies below, but you have to be careful because they can also kill you. A stage is completed once all enemies are defeated, and you move on to the next one after a second or two, which gives you some extra time to grab any leftover points. To clear a world, you need to finish all of its stages in one run. While defeating enemies is the main objective, chasing a high score adds another layer of fun. Enemies drop various fruits and treats, which can be collected for extra points, while additional points come from finding letters that spell out “bonus.” Since this is an arcade game, you cannot take your time. A countdown timer is always running, and if it reaches zero, the stage is failed. To extend the timer, you need to collect clock icons that randomly appear throughout the stages. Other helpful power-ups include extra lives, which are especially valuable because you can be defeated with a single hit, a pepper that temporarily gives you triple fire, and a fire shield that provides temporary invincibility. Completing a world only takes a few minutes, and the overall difficulty is fairly manageable. Later worlds add a couple of new enemies that might surprise you, but they all die very quickly. However, if you want to unlock all achievements, you will need to put in extra effort and earn enough points, with the required scores listed in the descriptions of the individual Steam achievements.