Horde of Viscount

This game brings me back to Game Boy, but with a ton of modern QoL additions. It's good fun with adjustable difficulty.

If you can forgive a warts and all devotion to the aesthetic of an original Gameboy display there's a surprisingly engrossing Metroidvania here. An emphasis on item collection for crafting, secondary weapons with movement effects, and progression and powerups tied to equipment mechanically differentiate and make this game surprisingly deep. A medley of options to improve accessibility also impresses. Good thing too, because the gam will tend to grate, especially in the early hours. As far as specs are concerned, I ran this game successfully on a Sandy Bridge Celeron G460 with a single core and no graphics card. You would have to go out of your way to try to make a machine that couldn't handle this game. https://youtu.be/JCa3XJklEnM?si=xR7NecEN-guznwDB

I should've written this review like two months ago. Instead, I'm doing it tonight. To be clear: I have Platinumed this game, possibly the only person to have done so at this time? I have 99 hours in it. I have played the randomizer. I have streamed the game many many hours. I completed an any% speedrun today. I've put the game in an Archipelago, and completed it. There is SO MUCH in this game, it's absurd. You are just not going to find a solo coded indie game for 5 bucks that has so much depth, so many different ways to play. It's a monochrome work of art, the music is whimsical and fitting, and the developer is a gem of a human being. He takes feedback, implements fixes, adds new functionality, and interacts with the playerbase. I have not been this impressed with a developer since Hello Games turned around No Man's Sky....but the difference is THIS GAME WAS GREAT FROM THE GO. The randomizer is a pretty new addition and scalable from a small compact experience to "LOL GOOD LUCK, SEE YA IN EIGHT HOURS OR MORE." When I played the demo, I spent HOURS on it. The demo, ya'll. I purchased it the next morning. I'd already gotten 5 bucks of entertainment out of it, what did I have to lose? What I found was a game that would've 100% felt right at home on a legit Game Boy, except the scale of it is far far beyond anything the Game Boy could've done. The weapons are also your movement tools, and the objectives/challenges for each stage and difficulty provide you with equipment to augment your abilities. Picking and choosing from that set of equipment can dramatically change how you navigate the game and how you fight enemies, but it's all at your disposal, and you can very much "find your own way" to play the game that suits you, regardless of skill level. Multiple difficulty modes that range from absolute beginner gamer to metroidvania-platformer-veteran, and rewards that make you want to try it all. This is a STELLAR game, and I cannot recommend it enough. I rarely ever leave reviews of games. I even more rarely want people to play a game I personally love, as much as I hope that more people experience this gem of a game. I was lucky to have seen a fellow streamer I knew through a mutual FF14 stream just happen to play this, and decided to try it, and I'm so glad I did, because it's honestly the game I'm playing the most right now...and when the main contenders for my attention are Super Metroid or Horde of Viscount, and Horde of Viscount wins more often than not.....that should make it clear how much I love this game.