Dorke and Ymp

I have a soft spot for games that almost didn't exist, and Dorke and Ymp is about as close to that category as it gets. Norse, a small Swedish studio, built this puzzle-action platformer in the early 1990s using unlicensed homebrew tools, couldn't find a publisher, and shelved it. Piko Interactive later tracked down the original programmer, composer, and artist, recovered roughly half the source code, and spent over a year finishing what Norse started, adding a complete Volcano world, four boss fights, cutscenes, an ending, and a password system before releasing it on PC in 2016. That backstory alone makes it fascinating as an artifact. Whether it holds up as an actual game is a murkier question. At its core, you control Dorke, a goblin-like figure running through roughly forty side-scrolling levels spread across several worlds, while Ymp, a small flying imp companion, theoretically assists you. The central mechanical hook is coordinating the two: Ymp can carry Dorke across gaps, fire projectiles at enemies, and help solve environmental puzzles. The idea is charming and the level count is genuinely substantial for what feels like a forgotten prototype. You also start with fifty lives, which tells you everything you need to know about the intended difficulty curve, you will burn through them, particularly on the smaller platforms that demand precision the controls don't always reward. Here is where honesty matters. Ymp's AI is the game's most persistent frustration. He delays pickups, fires in wrong directions, and occasionally stalls entirely at ledges where his help is non-negotiable. Dorke's own controls feel responsive enough in open spaces but start to fray under pressure. The emulator wrapper the game ships with, built on a bsnes/Mednafen core, lacks in-game control remapping, so adjusting your layout means digging into emulator settings rather than a menu. Some players have reported window-resize bugs when toggling graphics modes that are difficult to undo without reinstalling. The soundtrack, though, is something else entirely: keyboard-and-bass compositions that feel genuinely relaxed and unhurried, a small miracle given how frantic the platforming gets. It is the kind of music that makes you want to sit in the world a little longer than the world perhaps deserves. The honest framing for this one is curatorial rather than competitive. Dorke and Ymp is not trying to beat Donkey Kong Country or Super Mario World at anything. It sits closer to the middle tier of SNES-era platformers, the ones that would have blended into a crowded rental shelf in 1993 but carry a peculiar warmth now precisely because they never had that chance. If you are a retro-preservation enthusiast, someone who gets a specific pleasure from playing history that almost didn't happen, there is genuine value here. If you are looking for a polished puzzle-platformer to recommend without caveats, look elsewhere. The collision detection will frustrate you, Ymp will let you down at the worst moment, and the emulator wrapper needs patience to configure. But for the right kind of curious player, sitting with this game feels a little like reading a manuscript that was never supposed to survive.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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