Dragonfly Chronicles

I respect the hustle. Marco Ayala, a solo Mexican developer with a background in animation and graphic design, shipped Dragonfly Chronicles with a genuine love for the classics baked into every pixel. The stated goal was to recreate the feel of NES and SNES side-scrolling action, and you can feel that intent in the structure: big sprawling levels, comic-book cutscenes, a protagonist named Mark West on a mission to uncover what happened to his father, and an overarching conspiracy involving a shadowy organization called The Dragonfly. The bones of a retro throwback are all here. Unfortunately, the execution makes those bones ache. The core mechanical problem is one that no amount of goodwill can paper over: you cannot move and attack simultaneously. In a game that throws enemies at you constantly, this single design choice creates a loop where your best strategy is to plant your feet and punch until the screen clears. That works fine until a ranged enemy shows up, at which point your own ranged attack, limited by a stingy ammo count and rare pickups, becomes more of a trap than a tool. Getting hit knocks you back several steps, and since enemies do not stop spawning or shooting, a single bad moment can cascade into a death spiral that drains your health before you can regroup. The game does offer unlimited continues, but the checkpoints are sparse across levels that are genuinely large, so a death late in a stage can undo a significant chunk of progress with no warning. The visual side has problems too. Some sections pair black backgrounds with grey platforms in a way that makes it genuinely unclear which elements you can stand on and which are just decoration. The color palette throughout feels chosen without much regard for readability, which is a quiet but persistent frustration in a game that demands precise platforming. The story, delivered through those comic-book cutscenes, carries a certain low-budget charm, though the dialogue translation stumbles in places. If you can lean into that roughness with the right mindset, there is the faint shadow of a cheesy action adventure underneath. As someone who roots for the small, handcrafted thing, I find Dragonfly Chronicles genuinely hard to recommend without heavy caveats. The ambition is real. The love for retro action is real. But the movement-and-combat design actively fights the player rather than challenging them in a satisfying way, and when the visual language makes it difficult to read the environment, difficulty stops feeling intentional and starts feeling like friction. There is a sequel, Super Dragonfly Chronicles, which reportedly refined some of these ideas, and that might be the better entry point if the concept appeals to you. On its own terms, this first chapter is more interesting as a document of a developer learning in public than as a game to sit down and enjoy right now.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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