Have been intrigued about this for a long time. It's been sat in my Steam library for eons already, but the Vita version landed on Playstation Plus this week, which has been the kick up the arse to actually play it.
You begin the game having arrived at the entrance of La Mulana, a sprawling, labyrinthine cave, playing an Indy-like explorer with whip in hand. After poking about the camp located on the surface; exploring its shops and meeting its inhabitants, you can get right into things and see about entering La Mulana proper. From there, things get tricky very quickly. It's a 2D platformer with a grid-based map and different areas to explore, with various paths and chests being gated behind new skills and abilities, as well as through some rather obtuse puzzles from the off based around cryptic hints laid out in messages detailing the game's clearly quite deep lore. Aaaand there's traps - lots of traps. You can expect to die a lot.
The game's designed to look like an old computer game (an MSX game, in particular), but visually it looks clean and clear, and moves plenty smooth enough. Whilst only having experienced some six areas so far I can't speak for it at large, but the soundtrack's really nice too; upbeat and very good at getting you into the swing of things.
So far, I'm liking it a lot! It's reminding me of many things I love (Castlevania, Spelunky, Dark Souls (sorry)), but I do have some reservations that the puzzler aspect of it is difficult to the point of a guide becoming mandatory quickly.
You begin the game having arrived at the entrance of La Mulana, a sprawling, labyrinthine cave, playing an Indy-like explorer with whip in hand. After poking about the camp located on the surface; exploring its shops and meeting its inhabitants, you can get right into things and see about entering La Mulana proper. From there, things get tricky very quickly. It's a 2D platformer with a grid-based map and different areas to explore, with various paths and chests being gated behind new skills and abilities, as well as through some rather obtuse puzzles from the off based around cryptic hints laid out in messages detailing the game's clearly quite deep lore. Aaaand there's traps - lots of traps. You can expect to die a lot.
The game's designed to look like an old computer game (an MSX game, in particular), but visually it looks clean and clear, and moves plenty smooth enough. Whilst only having experienced some six areas so far I can't speak for it at large, but the soundtrack's really nice too; upbeat and very good at getting you into the swing of things.
So far, I'm liking it a lot! It's reminding me of many things I love (Castlevania, Spelunky, Dark Souls (sorry)), but I do have some reservations that the puzzler aspect of it is difficult to the point of a guide becoming mandatory quickly.
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