Another Hardcore Game

I have a soft spot for the kind of game that one person clearly built alone, after midnight, with a mischievous grin. Another Hardcore Game is exactly that. Ninba, a solo developer, shipped this 2D platformer in late 2018 under a premise that is almost too self-aware to fail: you are a programmer who has overworked themselves so thoroughly that they fall into their own unfinished game, and the game itself keeps breaking the rules on you. Enemies and map elements behave unpredictably by design. That framing is modest, honest, and kind of charming. The actual loop is a classic trial-and-death platformer spread across 8 levels. Controls are simple: move with WASD or arrow keys, jump with Space, attack with Ctrl. Reassignable in the launcher, which is a small but appreciated touch for a game this bare-bones. The challenge comes not from precision platforming in the Super Meat Boy sense, but from traps and objects that do not behave the way your instincts tell you they should. Early puzzles involve pushing color-coded boxes to specific positions before you can progress, which means dying to the same trap while also figuring out what the trap actually is. That double layer of confusion is the whole joke, and it works often enough to stay interesting. Honesty requires saying this: the production is raw. There is no original soundtrack to speak of, no layered world-building, no particular visual identity beyond functional 2D sprites. As someone who usually fixates on handcraft and sound design, I found the silence here a little hollow. The developer clearly patched down some of the worst offenders over time, noting in community posts that certain traps required hundreds of deaths to clear even in testing, and difficulty was later adjusted. That kind of scrappy, iterative solo-dev transparency earns goodwill. But it also signals the ceiling. This is a game made by someone learning while shipping, and the seams show. Who is this actually for? Honestly, players who enjoy the genre for the stubborn satisfaction of finally cracking a level, rather than for atmosphere or narrative. If your gaming sessions sometimes end with you staring at a screen at 1am whispering "one more attempt," this scratches that specific itch at a very low cost of entry. The photosensitive epilepsy warning listed on the IndieDB page is worth noting for anyone sensitive to flashing visuals. The review pool is small but sits solidly positive, which for an obscure sub-five-dollar solo release from 2018 is genuinely encouraging. Ninba built something that a small, specific crowd found worthwhile, and I respect that more than a polished game with nothing to say.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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