They made a mobile sidescroller that somehow doesn't feel as shitty to control as most games with virtual button layouts. That's gotta be worth something.

In between working on my own projects as well as stuff for school, I really haven't had time to play anything big recently. Even as I'm slogging away at my stuff, I decided a small break to play through this random little game I downloaded years ago. I've never touched it prior to today so I thought "why not, this can't be that long?" 4 hours later I 100% completed the game and got every achievement.

It wasn't close to being anything mind-blowing or innovative in any way but it really didn't need to hold my attention any longer than its runtime as it was a perfectly competent and fun platformer to which I don't always expect from mobile games. So many mobile games try as hard as possible to push for countless levels so they can keep people coming back for months but that ironically can turn me off of even trying to stick with a game if it comes off as bloated for the sake of content. Sword of Xolan is a pretty short game all things considered, but the way in which the difficulty escalates at a reasonable pace feels like feasible progression akin to a classic 2D platformer. I know I just word-vomited "difficulty curve" and this is of course nothing new to games in general, but you won't believe how so many games on mobile platforms miss the mark by being either way too easy or just becoming a pay-to-win nightmare as you progress into the later levels.

Sword of Xolan starts out pretty comfortably but will soon really push you as enemies get far more aggressive and tricky to avoid. Your own moveset itself is insanely simple with move, jump, swing sword, and shoot magic being your only options the entire game. This could contribute to the ease of control that I mentioned earlier since the virtual HUD isn't super crowded, but either way, this is one of the few platformers I feel was really made for playing on a phone. I almost wish their was more variety as you only get one spell throughout the game and the bosses themselves felt like they could have escalated to include even more intricate attack patterns, but perhaps this is just me hoping for more that would undermine this game's very strength in its simplicity and condensed design.

So yeah, this is literally the game ever but like unironically pretty fun tbh. It's free on the app store, albeit with ads, so I'd recommend this if you want to kill a few hours on something simple.

Okay they literally reskinned the My Gym Partner's a Monkey flash game. Why was Darwin even the second boss other than to copy MGPM's second boss and had no other underwater characters to use?

For comparison:

MGPM boss

Gumball boss