March2024
Mini Review A Void Hope (Switch) - A Dark, Immersive, Creepy Little Game
"If you look long enough into the void..."
Elden Pixels has built a strong reputation for itself with its Alwa games, both offering a great take on the traditional Metroidvania formula, but its latest release tries to do something quite a bit different. A Void Hope certainly carries on some of the level design and exploration elements central to the...
March2023
*spooking intensifies*
It’s remarkable how easy it can be to see the effects of developers' genuine passion when playing a video game. In Kraino Origins—the product of one man, Angel Dorantes—you can just feel how much appreciation the dev has for classic retro platformers. Better yet, it turns out that he clearly understands what made the...
February2021
Review Cathedral (Switch) - A Fine Metroidvania Which Can't Quite Match The Best Of The Genre
What a wonderful night to have a curse
About seven years ago, a Swedish developer named Eric Lavesson set out to build his own game engine, not knowing entirely where it might lead. As time passed and prototypes were made, a retro-style project began to coalesce which demanded more of his time and attention. That project was Cathedral, a new 8-bit...
September2020
Review Alwa's Legacy - One Of The Best Metroidvanias We've Seen On Switch So Far
A legacy to be proud of
A couple of years ago, Elden Pixels put out Alwa’s Awakening, a nice sort of throwback Metroidvania that built a quality experience around a few well-designed ideas. It didn’t exactly light up the charts, but Alwa’s Awakening still managed to amass a small following, one which Elden Pixels tapped last November went it...
September2018
Review Alwa's Awakening - An Authentic Throwback To Gaming's 8-Bit Past In More Ways Than One
Short, but sweet
There’s a fine line being walked nowadays with the proliferation of indie games modeled after the 8 or 16-bit releases of the good ol’ days. On one hand, it allows for retro games to rise above the limits of their time so that their full potential can be realized through weaving in modern game design where needed, such as in...
