Every once in a while, a game comes along that manages to hit the sweet spot. With just the right mix of nostalgia, complexity, and fun, the gaming experience becomes worthwhile again. That game is Ghoulboy. It’s a terrible title that hearkens back to the NES games of yesteryear, appropriate as that’s pretty much what Ghoulboy is: A NES-inspired retro platformer with just enough finesse to make it feel new and fresh.
Ghoulboy is the brainchild of Serkan Bakar. It’s unclear who that is, or whether Serkan Bakar is a company or person. A search for more information yielded virtually no results other than some assorted generic phone games and a mediocre Steam title. The game feels like a one person project however, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s low budget but playable, with precise controls and a solid but simplistic art style. Released last November on Steam, Ghoulboy tells the story of the son of a ghoul-killing adventurer who takes up a sword to defend the realm. It’s a thin story, but you don’t really need one anyway. This is a pure platform experience with some puzzles to solve to get through the levels. It’s immediately reminiscent of Ghouls N’ Ghosts, but with less flair and style. Ultimately, the gameplay makes up for it however, because, while frustrating, it’s still much more playable than the Ghosts N’ Goblins series.
Controls in Ghoulboy are tight. Some of the tightest I’ve seen in a good long while actually, and you’ll need that precision, as long double jumps onto tall platforms abound and enemies require extremely close combat. You have a limited inventory of ranged weapons, which you can replenish for a price at the witch’s cauldron. Hidden passages are everywhere and most levels have multiple ways to get through, including using your spears to literally climb walls and run over the tops of sections of levels, much like the hidden warp area in the underground Super Mario Bros. World 1 – 2. Your health bar can only take a handful of hits, but caution will only get you so far in this one. Ghoulboy is definitely a challenge.
The music is adequate and very chiptune-feeling. I didn’t find myself as excited by it as I was by Axiom Verge’s incredible soundtrack, but it’s solid and enjoyable. Graphics are somewhere in-between the NES and the SNES in terms of quality, which makes the game charmingly nostalgic. Filters are available as well, offering the warped look of a vintage curved-glass CRT and scanlines. You can also select what levels you want to play, though some levels are locked out until you progress in the game and beat the previous ones.
Be prepared though. Ghoulboy is hard. It’s fair, but incredibly challenging, and unless you do things just right, you’re unlikely to survive, especially with enemies that have patterns you haven’t seen before. Be prepared to replay levels ten or even twenty times before managing to work your way through. As you gain a better grasp on the controls, you’ll get better, but it’s no walk in the park. Even the first boss (out of four) presents a significant challenge, because if you die after using all your expendable weapons, they aren’t replenished and you have to beat the boss with sword alone; no small feat.
While patterns of the enemies are predictable, making the jumps is difficult. Jump the wrong way or fail to time things and you’re dead. Fall off something to experiment and find secrets and you’re dead. Even though you can continue from the beginning of a level if you run out of lives, Ghoulboy is not very forgiving. You get three extra lives and can continue from a midpoint marker…if you can reach it. If not, well, its game over and you can continue from the beginning of the level. It’s a tough slog, but one that’s ultimately pretty gratifying.
Undocked, the Switch still provides an excellent gaming experience and Ghoulboy is more than playable portably. It’s a bit more challenging, as the pixel art is a little small for the Switch screen, but it’s definitely not a bad way to play the game. Being able to just pick up where you left off is pretty great as well, thanks to the Switch’s sleep function. Different retro filters look better on the portable unit than they do on the docked one, so definitely play around with those. Usually filters are just a rarely used bonus, but in Ghoulboy, they definitely add to the ambiance of the game in a positive way.
Ghoulboy never leaves you stumped for long, and the puzzles are pretty straightforward with switch flipping and a bit of backtracking. Ultimately, if you’re looking for a challenging game that has precise controls and still feels modern and smartly-designed, Ghoulboy is going to be the game for you. It drops onto the Nintendo eStore on March 9th at a very reasonable price of $9.99. For retro gamers and platform fans, this one is a must-buy, so get out your mace and go slaughter some ghouls!
A digital copy of Ghoulboy was provided for the purposes of this review. It was played on a Nintendo Switch both docked and undocked. All images in this review are screens of the actual game in play under various filters.