Super Win the Game doesn't really build on the elements of You Have to Win the Game that made it so fun to play. Tight, difficult and creative platforming is replaced with very obvious layouts that rarely surprised or tested me. The game also feels too big and checkpoints are too far apart, so on the rare cases that the game does throw a tough room at you you'll be spending much of your reset time simply getting back to it.

I also didn't appreciate the top-down world map. It's fittingly retro, but in a bad way. I think committing to a fully-interconnected world would have made more sense, especially because the game already has elements of that.

Overall, Super Win the Game feels like a stretched-out copy of its predecessor. Decent enough, but inferior to its own free version.

I have earlier reviewed the freeware game "You Have To Win This Game". Afterwards, I just took on its sequel and felt like I had a blast with this one. Super Win The Game took and expanded the game features further for additional challenges and functionalities. Now there is a plot that unfolds as you progress and gives your character some kind of purpose as you interact with friendly NPC's.

The open-world exploration has been implemented and makes way for a greater terrain diversity, adding to the 8-bit game immersion that I already enjoyed in its prequel.

I would rather say that the game is slightly less challenging but there is so much content in it that'll reward you more through active puzzle solving and exploration. It's been a long time since I've played a game so addictive that I barely sensed the time flying by, so I'd say fans of retro/platformer games are in for quite a treat.

It's...fine. For like eight bucks, you get a decent amount of gameplay that's mediocre platforming in a Zelda 2 styling. The biggest issue is that it's just way too easy to just not know where to find a vital component you're looking for or to miss a trigger of some sort.

At one point, I went through a palace and saw a passage I couldn't reach with platforming, but decided to see if I could use one of my abilities to sneak around up to it. I failed, but I found an invisible platform to stand on. A couple jumps later and I'm up to the passage. I go in, drop down, do one of the standard dream sequence deals the game has when you find books, and then leave.

It's only later when I'm stuck on an area and forced to watch a speedrun to figure out why I can't progress that I discover that I wasn't supposed to go to that location until after I picked up a different item and essentially caused a sequence break, so the individual that was supposed to give me an item hadn't shown up yet.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff that can happen in here. The game has its moments, but it's mostly just an okay experience that pads its time out based on your inability to know exactly where to go next without visiting a fortune teller. I logged ten hours, but I imagine that someone with a guide could do the game in a couple or so. I'd just wait for a sale if you're going to pick it up unless you're really hard up on Metroidvanias. You can do better.