Developer: Wonderfling
Publisher: Digital Tribe
Price: $4.99
Platforms: PC, MAC
Release Date: July 9th, 2014
Get it at these trusted shops!: Steam
Terrian Saga: KR-17 is an retro inspired side-angled platformer. With a few elements of Halloween Harry (the jet pack), Bio Menace, Clyde’s Adventure, B.O.B. (Genesis, Mega- Drive) and Hocus Pocus. Where in which you must press switches, by pressing down on your gamepad or keyboard to signal the exit to allow 
yo to progress forward. With the inspiration of maze like levels, or sectors, it brought me back to my childhood playing with an joystick (gravis) with the games mentioned above. The game it self was very responsive via movement wise jumping, moving, except if I tried to press up on the analog stick with the jetpack in certain instances, until I figured out Right Bumper keeps your jets fired, and you can navigate with your D pad, which on the Xbox360 gamepad, feels uncomfortable to use. While most of the time completely easy to navigate, I hope Logitech Dual Action controllers get support for this game in the future. The game itself holding up as tight as those yester-year games did. With a 16-bit vibe to the graphics. With plenty of robot particles exploding here, and there. Attention to detail was given to animations when a enemy gets killed signs of there bodies remain, with smoke effects, or sparking. Which provides a sense of depth. Plus badassery. Is badassery such a word? Screw it we will do it live! Everything means sense in this game off the bat, where screwing up in the slightest is your fault, not the games. Many save points through out the game are in the form of panels with a hard disc symbol. Pressing down on these saves your game by the way. As most interaction in this game is apparent.
Music in this game is awesome, so much so when offered the free soundtrack I downloaded it to just to listen too over and over, as I write this, and do other things online. Just that good. Its upbeat, and has a Amiga, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive vibe to it. Two great gaming platforms of there time, including now. So the composers insight was right on the money.
With a game such as this, you need bosses, there are a decent selection of them, but in a format that is quick paced. Requiring you to be on your toes and move. The first bosses I encountered was a robotic spider, named Jasper. Which at first the mechanics got a little bit glitchy. When I would safely hop off of a long strip of blocks (the one with the exploding boxes dropping down) I would clear the spot, but somehow would rubber band my character for a moment and I would land in the water resetting the segment. After clearing it I had to pause the game and place down the paper bag that I was hyperventilating from.
This was not the only bug or glitch I hopped from. While it was a occurrence for a short while, the music would cut out, then skip, playing the main menu music for a short bit. This all cleared up after clearing the first boss check point, and music carried on as normal. A element that was charming to the game was KR-17’s bullet buddy/guided missile named Jim. I enjoyed having full control over him as I needed to access certain triggers to ether destroy fragments of the levels to progress, or to cause unholy chaos on enemies that were trolling tossing bouncing projectiles. Basically, what you have to do with the yellow guy is navigate without touching any surface, as soon as he touches a enemy, a wall, etc, he will explode, removing some points of usage. So an strategy of being careful using him comes out to play. Other then that your buster, or laser gun is fully at your disposable as semiautomatic fire. These little elements pull out the gameplay in the lengthy exploring of stages. As I am used to grinding out maze like levels as like Doom, or even Blake Stone(yeah BS had some annoying exploring,m and getting lost to it.) Some might find this annoying, however how this game was made, it fits, bringing a longer playtime to it. So if you try to speed run this game, good luck.
Overall, the game has a steady difficulty curve, I felt paced where I was not tossed into overly unfair odds, but where I could learn new think-on-your-feet puzzles. Over time the levels get more complex. Where the switches you require to complete the level are hidden well, plus in plan sight. However requiring you to roll back to the previous statement, think on your feel to get to them. Or die trying like this was Dark Souls 16bit point 0. I would whole kindheartedly recommend this game to anyone who loves classic games such from the Amiga, or even the good old MS Dos 3.2+ library. As I could tell the folks who made this had a lot of love for the era and genre making this game. For a very affordable price of five dollars you get quite a bit of content. Over sixty four levels, it will keep you busy quite a while. It placed four hours down clocked on my time, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Aside from the few issues I came across. Also on there website is some pretty nifty Folditz, which are printable cutout characters you build and display. Found here.
8.5
