World Pole Stone Dusk: Diadem of the Pole

Got "World Pole Stone Dusk: Diadem of the Pole" a while back on itch.io, thinking "Huh, what's that?". Now it's on Steam... "Huh, how's that?" Well, this is a weird one: It is an extremely short game (12 screens a 2 enemy waves), you can reach the oddly shaped boss within 2-3 minutes. Enemies spawn at the exact same spot, so its all about memorisation and which weapons to use (I go for spear/spear/axe/wand chapterwise). Movement, momentum and weapon-wielding is quite tight, so every hit is on you. As I said, quite a weird one, but with the moody color palette, the pixely presentation and banger sound (chapter 4 rocks) plus it's quite epic dark fantasy lore (I guess?) make it a definetly unique "micro"-game. Also quite a nice game to speedrun, I guess. Looking forward to get the survival-score achievement, the supposedly secret levels and the definetly no-joke challenge of "No-Hit-Run".

Great energy, great music

Reminded me of Altered Beast, which is good! Dying over and over until you memorize the rooms and how to get through without taking any damage.

I am not good at this video game but this video game is good at me. 4 whole weapons, you pick where you play em, you have to watch where and when you use em. The art is sick as hell. Every time I get hit, which is frequent, I watch just a little bit more bones happen on the screen. Until it's all bones. What a sick health meter. And it just sits there forever if you want it to. You gotta choose to quit out or retry. I love this game for letting me suck at it and just sit there in the aftermath of my suck. You should buy it on both steam and on itch to give jazz more of your money

Quite fun. The flow of gameplay feels quite smooth and there's a nice learning curve to progressing through each screen. It's particularly nice that (for a game where you have multiple weapons simultaneously) each weapon feels as if they have their own specific use-cases such that none particularly predominate or are made obsolete.

Otimo jogo! Gostie bastante de julgar nos meus pormenores meus movimentos para garantir cada tela fosse completada da maneira mais rapida ou segura que fosse, sendo como meu ataque iria me mover ou não no chão ou no ar, evitar inimigos de soltarem suas balinhas ou ter que desviar delas de alguma forma o estilo sendo simples tem seu charme e ajuda a rapidamente saber o que é cada elemento na tela. Além do texto que mesmo sendo curto como jogo tem uma prosa gostosa. Posso ter terminado mas acredito que tem alguns segredinhos que ainda não entendi como achar.

A simple game that just feels great to play and beat.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! It's a game!

very cool little arcade thingy

I've yet to find any of the secrets, but this is a perfectly scoped short arcade-style gauntlet. The bleak aesthetic crunches really nicely against the intuitive, pick-up-and-play design approach. Most games with this kind of grim decayed world aesthetic really make you linger in it for hours on end. Here, it's nice to experience it in a small batch. The pace of new weapon and enemy types is just right, each one distinct and efficiently characterized. Ends on an appealing downbeat note.