Temple of the Spear

To be perfectly honest, the minute I usually see Gameboy-style graphics in a game I'm turned off and don't want to even bother playing. I'm not sure why, my brain is probably hardwired like that. This game's music didn't make things any better as well. But I thought I'd give it a chance anyway.

The game is a flip screen exploration with bits of slashing here and there and some puzzles that involve doors mostly. (yes it resembles the old Zelda games but I didn't want to use the term "Zelda like" and I'm not sure if there's a category for these games. And anyway, why label everything? :)). As the main title suggests your main weapon is a spear which you can use in 2 ways, close range and long range. Naturally people will go for long range immediately as it's more effective and you have a better chance of hitting enemies before they get close, but there's a small catch: you have limited ammo, and only short range attacks don't deplete your ammo cache.

 There are doors that can delay your progress, and there are switches (well, some boxes) that need to be hit before each door opens. And here's another interesting bit: instead of the game placing the doors around the rooms and letting you discover which switch opens which door, each door is connected with its switch with a line (could be a power line, but it doesn't matter). So, you end up in a door you want to open, you simply follow the line to the switch, hit it, take the trail back and see the door open - presto! A really nice addition that while subtle, it makes the game a lot better than it should be. Of course things aren't always that easy and there are doors that open other doors, and of course with the enemies floating around the levels it adds to the challenge.

Lots of checkpoints around to save your progress and come back to it if you decide to take a rest, so I guess you could do worse than give it a try!

(P.S. probably turn the music off, I know I mentioned it at the beginning, just thought it was worth mentioning again)