With such a wealth of homebrew and aftermarket video games releasing for previous Nintendo {hardware}, we thought we might try some of the promising examples on this neo-retro Sport Boy overview. To reiterate, Glory Hunters is not accessible on Swap, although we’ll remember to let you recognize if that state of affairs ever modifications.
For overview, George performed and captured screenshots on an Analogue Pocket.
The discharge of GB Studio in 2019 has resulted in a flurry of video games accessible for Nintendo’s beautiful large brick over the previous couple of years, however few have been as bold or as broadly lined as Glory Hunters – the debut recreation of Mexico-based 2think design studio. Billed as “a singular Sport Boy action-adventure RPG”, Glory Hunters smashed its crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter in 2022 and launched lately in each downloadable digital (through itch.io) and physical form, the latter coming courtesy of Bitmap Gentle. However does it stay as much as the hype?
Throughout the build-up, Glory Hunters was typically likened to The Legend of Zelda, and proper off the bat we see a big, celestial physique (not a moon!) on a collision course with the land, adopted by a positively Wind Waker-esque slideshow detailing an historical story – imploring a hero to stand up and summon a slumbering God to avert catastrophe.
However the similarities with Nintendo’s iconic franchise kind of finish there. We’re thrust straight into the motion. Form of. We have now a sword however there are not any enemies, just a few bushes and a path blocked by a go well with of armour and a pleasant little NPC, who lays out the premise that units Glory Hunters other than its forebears. The go well with of armour known as a ‘Glory Knight’ and development within the recreation is achieved by the gathering of ‘Glory Factors’ (GP) awarded by finishing ‘wonderful deeds’. We are able to use these to repay the Glory Knights and open up new areas of the map. It’s a form of levelling up, map enlargement, and forex system rolled into one.
At an deadlock and with little else to go on, we do what any action-adventure veteran would. We begin chopping bushes. As soon as 5 chew the mud, a notification pops up – we’ve achieved an excellent feat (apparently) known as ‘Minimize Starter’ and have a shiny GP for our troubles. We might pay up and transfer on however as a substitute we maintain chopping, curious as to what’s essential to additional this achievement. In doing so we unearth, to our delight, a special feat by choosing up a certain quantity of merchandise drops.
Studying by doing is one thing of a misplaced artwork in trendy video games however Glory Hunters excels at this. It is aware of the tropes — we’re going to learn signposts, peer down a nicely, relentlessly chop grass — and it rewards us for it. Nevertheless it additionally steers us effortlessly towards extra obscure feats, drip-feeding factors to encourage repetition and exploration, always fuelling the compulsion to maintain probing and making an attempt new issues. It’s setting us as much as perceive the deal from the very starting – the whole lot on this world is transactional. Succinct tutorial over, we’re then free to discover the open world of Glorianta any means we would like, constrained solely by the variety of factors in our possession and armed with the data that reaching one among its 4 corners will enable us to finish our quest.
Simpler stated than achieved. Glorianta is a behemoth. At a grid dimension of 17×19 it’s greater than 4 occasions larger than Hyperlink’s first pocket journey – and simply as beautiful as Koholint, too. In actual fact, the entire visible and audio presentation of the sport is elegant. The boss designs are a selected spotlight and there are cute cutscenes scattered all through the journey. The completely different areas of the world have a powerful sense of identification whereas the music underscores every space completely, thumping anthems akin to Mega Man energy us by the overworld whereas cosy aid is supplied as we bustle about cities assembly inhabitants. It’s by no means overbearing and most significantly, very hummable. It’s not all work both, with some wonderful minigames dotted about to each waste time on and acquire GPs. Double win!
Exploration is hampered by the truth that the overworld map is barely accessible in stated cities. With such an enormous area to discover, it’s a bit of overwhelming to not have a reference level at our fingertips; happily, the enemies are various sufficient in sample and design and the puzzles and hidden secrets and techniques sufficiently participating to maintain exploration attention-grabbing – although it does chug a bit if there’s greater than two foes on the display. Saving the sport and replenishing well being can be restricted to particular areas and for a recreation that depends on repetition to drive exploration, this generally is a actual drawback. Keep in mind these bushes we chopped down at the beginning of the sport? We chopped them down 100 occasions, then died earlier than discovering a save level, which meant chopping them down 100 occasions once more. This was fairly discouraging at occasions – notably at the beginning of the search.
One other gripe we’ve is demise leading to us being returned to the world with the quantity of well being we had on the final save level, as a substitute of replenishing it. Greater than as soon as we got here by a tough stretch, saved, then confronted a tricky problem or wanted to return and have become locked into a reasonably dire state of affairs the place advancing or retreating punished us again and again.
Having stated that, the steadiness of GPs earned/required is fairly nicely judged, with minimal quantities of grinding essential to press on. However GPs are additionally used as a forex to improve your armour, sword, quantity of well being, or give hints, so that you’re taking part in a relentless guessing recreation about spending with out realizing if a giant blockade of Glory Knights lay forward that might require hard-earned GPs and if amassing extra could be achievable and even fulfilling ought to that be the case. Over time our considering adjusted to the concept of chasing factors to bolster ourselves, as a substitute of bolstering ourselves after which chasing factors, however this concerned plenty of backtracking and there have been undoubtedly occasions after we simply needed to get on with it. There’s an entire host of different collectibles which felt a bit of underused and we couldn’t assist however suppose perhaps these might need been higher suited to the function of forex.
Conclusion
Glory Hunters is a package deal that has had plenty of love poured into it whereas remaining a bit of tough across the edges. We weren’t at all times certain after we have been taking injury and even dishing it out – notably when dealing with bigger, noisier bosses, and a few beats inside the recreation felt a bit flat. Some translation quirks and grammatical errors additionally popped up, however these have been by no means substantial sufficient to hassle us (we truly thought they added a little bit of appeal to proceedings). All in all, Glorianta is a wealthy, deep world that’s fulfilling to discover and efficiently faucets into nostalgia for Sport Boy experiences whereas offering a contemporary and attention-grabbing tackle the components. Proof, if there was ever any doubt, that there’s life within the previous Boy but.