Infernax

I went in expecting a nostalgia delivery vehicle with some light retro window dressing. What I got instead was something with genuine personality hiding under all the blood. Berzerk Studio, the same team behind Just Shapes and Beats, channeled their obvious love for NES-era action into Infernax, and the craft shows in every screen of it. This is a side-scrolling action RPG that sits somewhere between Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but it learns from what frustrated people about both of those games rather than faithfully reproducing the headaches. The core loop is mace swings, platforming, and careful positioning. Alcedor, the crusader-duke you control, can only swing horizontally until you acquire magic, so reading enemy patterns and managing the short weapon range keeps you honest from the first screen onward. XP works as a secondary currency spent at save shrines to boost Power, Health, or Mana, so every level-up decision has a tangible, immediate effect on how combat plays out. A selection of spells rounds out the toolkit: a healing incantation, thunderstorm summons, a teleport to the nearest save point, and more, some of which are locked behind moral alignment. Yes, alignment. The morality system is the thing that elevates Infernax above its genre peers. Choices arrive early and often, and they carry real downstream consequences. Evict a bandit camp to help a local resident, and those same bandits might ambush a merchant you meet later. Spare someone or condemn them, and the world reshuffles quietly around you. The game never telegraphs which choice is "right," and it actively enjoys punishing what looks like the virtuous option. Four endings, including Ultimate Good and Ultimate Evil paths gated through the in-game Necronomicon, give serious replay incentive beyond mere curiosity. The pixel art does something interesting: it draws from 8-bit source material but pushes the palette and sprite complexity closer to 16-bit, landing on what one critic called a "12-bit fusion." The gore is abundant and reaches a level of dark absurdity that functions as unintentional comedy more than shock value. Enemy deaths, boss designs, and full-screen dramatic illustrations during key narrative beats all signal that Berzerk cared deeply about every frame. The chiptune soundtrack is not background noise. Each area has its own distinct piece and the composers clearly understood that music in an NES-style game needs to feel like foreground, not texture. There are real rough edges. The single mace weapon can start to feel repetitive across a full playthrough without the magic variety keeping things interesting. Dungeon backtracking, especially key-hunting segments, edges into tedium during the mid-game, and the game does not always communicate clearly where to go next. The day-night cycle adds some useful quest-gating and spawns faster, more aggressive enemies after dark, but the map gives limited help navigating it all. Classic Mode, which strips XP and gold on death and spaces checkpoints aggressively, is genuinely punishing in the old-school way. Casual Mode keeps progress on death without softening the actual platforming or combat, which is a smarter design call than most retro-revival games manage. A single run clocks in around six to eight hours, which is exactly the right length for this kind of game. Infernax knows when to end, and the moral branch structure means a second run is not a chore. It is a different game. For anyone who grew up with NES adventures and wanted one that respected what worked while quietly fixing what did not, this is the one worth spending an evening with.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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