Fun game if you're looking for a tight, retro-inspired action-platformer in the vein of Shovel Knight and the classic Mega Man games. Would recommend
Armortale is a game with a lot of charm, that unfortunately struggles a bit with its execution leaving me with a middle-of-the-road rating.
You play as a nameless character that has the ability to switch between four different sets of armor all with different abilities. You have the Golem armor, which makes you immune to spikes, and gives you an up-attack, at the cost of a little bit of movement speed. The 'Hero' armor, which lets you move a bit faster, hang from ceilings, and do a spin-attack that reflects projectiles. The Bomber armor, which lets you throw, well, bombs - blowing up specific kinds of blocks. And finally, the Wing armor, which increases your jump height and lowers your fall-speed.
Credit where credit is due, these armors are really well designed. I was constantly finding myself swapping armors, and every time I found myself struggling with a section of a level I would stop and ask "Is this really the best armor for this situation?". It's what the game set out to do, and I think it did it well. I will say that the Hero armor and the Golem armor feel like the most consistent by far, though it could be related to the fact that those are the first two you acquire.
The visuals of the game are also pretty good. There's a very clear art-style, and though some of the bosses look a bit.... off, the environment and character art are good. I love the extra touches put in as well, like the goblin animations where they run away in fear, or get angry and bash each other on the head.
What unfortunately brings the game down for me is the level design and the sheer lack of mid-points in the levels. Let me explain: The game plays through Mario-style or old-school Kirby-style. You select a level from the map, and play it through to completion, often with a boss at the end. These levels are considerably long for a game of this type, and often times there is only one mid-level checkpoint. While this isn't a problem normally, what you'll primarily be dying to in the game are not Enemies, but from pitfalls and spikes. These are insta-kills, and because of the aforementioned level-length you will be losing a lot of your time to unfortunate deaths.
There were many times I simply wanted to put the game down because I have to play through 5 minutes of an easy level with a difficult 2 minute section over and over and over again. It's very unforgiving, but not in an interesting way, just a frustrating way. Mario or Kirby games fix this by having more midpoints, shorter levels, or even just designing in mechics that give more chances to not die like mushrooms or fire flowers - but Armortale doesn't have any of those it just has armor and hp. The final level of the game has multiple checkpoints and was the only level that felt like the length between checkpoints was 'okay'. Not great, just okay.
Putting all of that aside though, there are other parts of the game that don't work so well either. You'll be collecting one of two currencies in Armortale, Witch-Tokens and Gems. Witch-Tokens are coins - collect 100 and gain another life. Gems are currency that you can use at the Witch-Tower to get slight powerups. The powerups are a bit lackluster and definitely not worth grinding levels to purchase. The biggest problem with them is that they are per-life upgrades so if you die once you lose them.
You can get a little bit of extra health, a potion you can use mid-level to heal yourself, a one-up (which I never bought, what's the point if game-overing doesn't matter?), a leaf shield that rotates around you and also can break when it does enough damage, and a bird. The bird is by far the best powerup, because it's cheap and does it's own thing without any effort on your part. But again, die once and you've basically burned that cash. On the other hand, there's nothing else for you to spend gems on, so just buy the bird over and over. Birds Bros 4 Life.
Really though when you get down to it, for a one-person passion project, it accomplished what it set out to do. I think the game is fine, an attempt at a retro 2D platforming game that maaaybe fell a little bit short of expectations from me. It's pretty cheap on Steam, and it's worth the 4 hours I spent trying to beat it. With a few tweaks I think it could really shine, and I hope I can play more from this dev in the future.
You play as a nameless character that has the ability to switch between four different sets of armor all with different abilities. You have the Golem armor, which makes you immune to spikes, and gives you an up-attack, at the cost of a little bit of movement speed. The 'Hero' armor, which lets you move a bit faster, hang from ceilings, and do a spin-attack that reflects projectiles. The Bomber armor, which lets you throw, well, bombs - blowing up specific kinds of blocks. And finally, the Wing armor, which increases your jump height and lowers your fall-speed.
Credit where credit is due, these armors are really well designed. I was constantly finding myself swapping armors, and every time I found myself struggling with a section of a level I would stop and ask "Is this really the best armor for this situation?". It's what the game set out to do, and I think it did it well. I will say that the Hero armor and the Golem armor feel like the most consistent by far, though it could be related to the fact that those are the first two you acquire.
The visuals of the game are also pretty good. There's a very clear art-style, and though some of the bosses look a bit.... off, the environment and character art are good. I love the extra touches put in as well, like the goblin animations where they run away in fear, or get angry and bash each other on the head.
What unfortunately brings the game down for me is the level design and the sheer lack of mid-points in the levels. Let me explain: The game plays through Mario-style or old-school Kirby-style. You select a level from the map, and play it through to completion, often with a boss at the end. These levels are considerably long for a game of this type, and often times there is only one mid-level checkpoint. While this isn't a problem normally, what you'll primarily be dying to in the game are not Enemies, but from pitfalls and spikes. These are insta-kills, and because of the aforementioned level-length you will be losing a lot of your time to unfortunate deaths.
There were many times I simply wanted to put the game down because I have to play through 5 minutes of an easy level with a difficult 2 minute section over and over and over again. It's very unforgiving, but not in an interesting way, just a frustrating way. Mario or Kirby games fix this by having more midpoints, shorter levels, or even just designing in mechics that give more chances to not die like mushrooms or fire flowers - but Armortale doesn't have any of those it just has armor and hp. The final level of the game has multiple checkpoints and was the only level that felt like the length between checkpoints was 'okay'. Not great, just okay.
Putting all of that aside though, there are other parts of the game that don't work so well either. You'll be collecting one of two currencies in Armortale, Witch-Tokens and Gems. Witch-Tokens are coins - collect 100 and gain another life. Gems are currency that you can use at the Witch-Tower to get slight powerups. The powerups are a bit lackluster and definitely not worth grinding levels to purchase. The biggest problem with them is that they are per-life upgrades so if you die once you lose them.
You can get a little bit of extra health, a potion you can use mid-level to heal yourself, a one-up (which I never bought, what's the point if game-overing doesn't matter?), a leaf shield that rotates around you and also can break when it does enough damage, and a bird. The bird is by far the best powerup, because it's cheap and does it's own thing without any effort on your part. But again, die once and you've basically burned that cash. On the other hand, there's nothing else for you to spend gems on, so just buy the bird over and over. Birds Bros 4 Life.
Really though when you get down to it, for a one-person passion project, it accomplished what it set out to do. I think the game is fine, an attempt at a retro 2D platforming game that maaaybe fell a little bit short of expectations from me. It's pretty cheap on Steam, and it's worth the 4 hours I spent trying to beat it. With a few tweaks I think it could really shine, and I hope I can play more from this dev in the future.