Axria Retro World Review - 8-Bit Sidescroller in a Game Boy style!

Today I have for you an interesting game developed by Angus J. Beer! It's called Axria: retro world. Now I want to point something out before you all come over my place to piddle through my letter box. I do know the creator, in fact he is one of my best friends. But this does NOT mean he gets a free pass! If there is something wrong with his games then I will point them out! And if he makes a terrible game then I will say that it's terrible, no rose tinted glasses on my face.

Now before I give it any kind of rating and review, here's what the developer says about his game

”I wanted to make a simple game that would be easy to program and finished in a short time period. Since the real AXRIA was going through development hell with it having constant slow-down with all the Memory space it was taking up. I figured the experience of making this would help when restarting the project with all the programming shortcuts and appropriate sprite sizing.”

Onwards with my play through and review! You are "Sarah kinzi" a woman who seems destined to face off against monsters and the undead without any kind of gratitude in return, not what I would call a thankful job. Sarah is tasked in hunting down the mysterious "scarfire" (who seems to be a fan of scarface since he says "say hello to my little friends") and stop his evil plans of taking over "moonlight island"! How? by using her "star" weapon, a strange invention that can be thrown, rebounded off walls and then kicked for increased speed! It's tricky to master but when you do you will be doing some awesome tricks with it!

The game is made with an engine called "Game Editor" and as such has got a few bugs that are well known within the game editor community. For one, you can glitch through walls and floors, getting trapped or falling to your death. This isn't a game breaking bug though as it wont happen in the same place twice and is usually down to how fast you are going or if you land on two blocks at the same time, sliding in-between them. This isn't something I have experienced often, only happening once while jumping between speed platforms.

Now onto the game itself!

There are Four stages with mini stages in between them (much like Mario with world 1-1, 1-2, 1-3 and so fourth) with changing themes, platforms and enemies. This means that you often have to change your play style and be a bit more careful with the wall spikes,  I almost raged at one section due to those things.

Evergreen hill.

Crystal glacier.

Custurn amazon.

Hidden fortress.

Evergreen hill is a very basic level which introduces you with the mechanics and controls.

Crystal glacier introduces sliding platforms that are difficult to walk on, new enemies as well as a few interesting mini bosses and under water platforming where you jump higher and descend slower, making avoiding spikes and enemies all that much harder.

Custurn amazon has you running for your life from collapsing platforms and introduces destructible blocks, it also has a pyramid with a puzzle that has confused many a gamer (yours truly was the first to figure it out without help), the final boss is also a real doozy with you having to chase after it into space.

Hidden fortress is the final level, now you must use everything you have learned to avoid instant death around every corner! can you find and defeat scarfire?

SECRETS!

Yes there are secrets to be found within the game! There are plenty and I wont spoil them though I will give a hint to where one such place is, when you first start the game, go left instead of right. You can also use the 'C' key to change the colour, I recommend the rainbow colour as it gives the game more of a hyper feel to it, after switching to rainbow I found myself diving across platforms like I was speed running the game. I would also recommend using a game pad as I found the keyboard to not give the correct feel of feedback, though that is just my opinion.

Pro's

The game is quite unique and the star weapon mechanic is well implemented, the platforming is challenging but fun and the controls are very responsive, no delay what so ever.

Con's

The hit boxes for platforms can be a little off, several times I would hit the jump key but fell straight off the edge instead, the game is very short, I was able to beat it in about an hour and sometimes the difficulty seemed cheap, often killing you in a way you didn't know was coming.

Final rating: 7/10!

While the game does have it's flaws it does however have a certain charm to it, you rage, maybe throw something but you wont quit, you end up saying "damnit this game wont beat me!" and for that it's good! It's addictive! While the platforms end a little shorter than they seem, that is something 'Game editor' is to blame for not the game itself and the cheap difficulty does let it down which is why it doesn't score higher.

Though i still say that it's a game you should deffinitely check out! It's free and you can download it from the links bellow.

Happy gaming!

- Written by David Green

Links:

The site: http://axria.tumblr.com/

The games: http://axria.tumblr.com/Games

Download link for Axria: Retro world: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxCp2KtsyecQeXZPYmo3VUJIdm8&usp=sharing&tid=0BxCp2KtsyecQUkU4RUZFMk1oOGs