You know, lately, I've been really getting into older style games, or just Retro. Games with the style: turn on, play, beat, and that's it! Nothing deep in them, those games you turn on on a random afternoon and play casually, like the NES and SNES games. And well... Looking for games in this style nowadays, I found a ton of PS2 games, and also many indie games, but among the indies, the ones that caught my attention without a doubt were from the JoyMaster studio.

What caught my eye the most about their games is that they are direct parodies of old franchises, most of which don't even exist anymore, like the game Oniken which is heavily inspired by old games like Ninja Gaiden, and with visuals very similar to Berserk (at least I think so). And also the game Odallus which is more reminiscent of the older Castlevania series, you know with all that exploration aspect, and somewhat poor controls...
But without a doubt, the game that grabbed my attention the most was the last game they released, Blazing Chrome, which was meant to be a game similar to Contra, and that got me incredibly hyped because I love Contra, and games in this style like Gunstar Heroes, and Alien Soldier.
And well, Blazing Chrome is basically a 2D runner shoot that reminds me of various classic games like Contra, especially Contra Hard Corps, and also has many similarities with Alien Soldier, Metal Slug, Alien Storm, and for some reason, I felt a bit of a Forgotten Worlds vibe in this game. In summary: This is a totally retro game from the 80s and 90s. As usual for this company's games, the cutscenes are beautiful, looking like an old anime, but in pixel art. The story is simple, there was an apocalypse, and you go fight the bad guys. The stories in games don't always need to be complex because you can tell that the focus was on the gameplay.

As you can notice while playing, the gameplay is super frenetic, anyone who has played a game in this style knows well how it works, you just hold down the shoot button, and try not to die in the hell of bullets that are the levels of this game.
The animations are absurdly beautiful and fluid, all of them unnecessarily detailed, I love the explosion effects, particle effects, or even the simple animation of your gun’s shells falling and bouncing on the ground. The graphics aren't far from a Mega Drive and SNES, or even a Game Boy Advance, but it gives the impression that they tried to faithfully emulate playing in an arcade.
The music is also very good with a real 16-bit era game vibe, unfortunately, I couldn't hear the music very well while playing because besides the game having SHOOTING AND EXPLOSIONS NONSTOP, my friend and I were screaming, joking, and laughing nonstop while we played. So I think that's actually a positive point!

This game really brought back that vibe of playing with your buddy on the couch like in the old days, it was super fun discovering new weapons together, the power-ups, and both feeling like champions after beating the boss.
One thing I can't say for sure is if playing in co-op affected the difficulty a lot because I found the game relatively easy. We beat the game on normal level which gives you 5 lives and infinite continues, so if you get stuck on a boss, you can basically fail as many times as you want, since the game is very generous with checkpoints, and the game over always takes you to the last one which is usually before the boss. Then you just keep repeating the fight until you figure out a good strategy, and memorize the attack pattern.
I really wanted to play on hardcore, but you only unlock it by beating the campaign mode on normal difficulty first, which in the end is not that easy, there were indeed some frustrating moments, but thanks to the thousands of checkpoints we managed to beat it without difficulties, it reminded me of console Metal Slug where you die, die, die, but beat the game fine at the end of the day. Easier difficulty is not always a negative point, as it makes the game more accessible to all kinds of players, but theoretically, that's what the easy mode is for. The normal mode ends up not being that hard, and the hard mode ends up being too hard.
But you can get good at the game and defeat the bosses without dying. They all telegraph their attacks well, giving you the opportunity to predict their moves, and this also applies to level design. No trap makes you lose life for nothing, for example, in stage 4, there are some falling platforms, but at the beginning of the stage, there are platforms that fall in a safe place, so you unconsciously get used to it without even needing a tutorial.

Now talking a bit about the negative points, it was the vehicle stages, or the special stages, these stages are TOO FAST. The background of these stages moves smoothly, kind of too smoothly. It's hard to explain, but my friend and I got our vision a bit messed up with these stages, our eyes started to water, and it was hard to look at the screen properly, because seeing an image rolling super fast on the screen can cause some discomfort. A simple fix could be just slowing down the background image a bit, because that would still give the effect that you're running fast. Another stage that has this but is also graphically impressive is the jetpack stage, where it takes place in a circumflex tunnel that isn't 3D, everything is 2D sprites expanding to give the illusion of 3D. It's a genius, beautiful effect, and I've never seen anything like it in any other 2D game in my life, BUT, this effect also strains the eyes a bit, at least here the background is a bit darker so it doesn't affect as much, but still, we were relieved when this stage ended. To fix this problem, the background here could also move slower which would avoid tiring and the 3D effect would still look great, at least I think so, I'm talking as if the programmers were dumb while I can't even tie my shoes.
But aside from that, the game is basically perfect, the ONLY problem I had with it was the vehicle stages which were very tiring, I just really wanted better difficulty options, the normal level is too easy, and the hardcore mode is too hardcore. Having 3 lives in a stage, and 3 continues complicates things a bit. The game isn't very long, and I believe it is possible to beat it like this, but all I wanted was fewer checkpoints on the normal level because it made the game ridiculously easy. But seriously, the game is really VERY GOOD, it's amazing to see a linear indie game that isn't a metroidvania (since that genre seems to be a hit with indies), fast, and ridiculously beautiful. I recommend this game to anyone who has ever played a runner shoot in their life.

On the internet, there are always various short films, A.R.G.s, and horror games where the main reason they are good is precisely the mystery around them, the lack of explanation about what is happening. However, this same mystery and lack of explanation is also what can "kill" this type of content. Some A.R.G.s, for example, end up losing their charm and becoming oversaturated very quickly when many explanations start to emerge around them. It's always much better and scarier when you don't know what's going on; after all, fear always comes from the unknown, right? (sorry) Expanding a mysterious horror story can be a mistake because explaining it might reveal that nothing significant was actually happening. But what if you do it in the right way? Well, that's where Amanda the Adventurer comes in.

Amanda the Adventurer had its first version released between 2021 and 2022. One day, you go to clean your attic and suddenly find some lost tapes of a 'bizarre' cartoon. This cartoon is like a strange version of Dora the Explorer. You could interact with these tapes, and as you interacted, you could also discover hidden things in them. As far as I remember, this demo only had one possible ending where Amanda turns into a demogorgon and comes to kill you. The idea was really cool because at no point did it explain the story or what was actually happening, and when it ended, it was like: 'What? I didn't understand anything.'

Then recently, the complete game was released, and despite explaining the story, it leaves you with more questions than answers in the end, and that's why this game is so good! Even with explanations, the game manages to maintain all the mystery until the end. This complete game was a great expansion of the original version, expanding that bizarre and mysterious little game in the best possible way. You have to solve puzzles to unlock new tapes, and if you solve these puzzles in specific ways, you change the ending. There are also tapes that explain the story, but at the same time, they explain nothing. The game captures a lot of attention and is very interesting. I genuinely felt a real sense of fear playing this damn game, and it had been a long time since that happened.