Lords of Exile

My first hour with Lords of Exile felt like slipping into an old coat I forgot I owned. Squidbit Works is essentially one developer, Carlos Azuaga, who took a Kickstarter in 2020 and turned it into something that plays like a fourth NES Castlevania that Konami never made. That framing is not hype. It is the most accurate description I can give you. Gabriel moves with deliberate, slightly heavy footwork, his sword arc wide and satisfying. Sub-weapons are collected from breakable boxes and spent on flying daggers, overhead sickles, and boomeranging scythes. The slide is there for low obstacles and boss fights. The jump feels weighted in exactly the way old Konami platformers felt weighted. If any of that sentence reads as a red flag to you, I want you to know: same, initially. But the game earns the restriction. The eight levels are each built around a distinct biome and enemy type, from bamboo forest samurais to submerged ruins with collapsing columns, and each one ends in a boss that telegraphs its patterns while still demanding your attention. Completing a boss rewards Gabriel with a new ability, ranging from a double jump with strict timing requirements to shadow spirits that can break barriers or grapple unreachable spots. The currency system lets you visit spectral shopkeepers hidden in each stage, though with generous section-based checkpoints and no lives system, the economy never feels load-bearing. That is actually one of the game's mild tensions: some players will feel the lack of stakes, others will be relieved the game respects their time. I sit firmly in the second camp. The soundtrack is where I want to linger, because it deserves it. The music is produced using a Sega Genesis audio chip, and the result is something that sits in that peculiar pocket of chiptune where melody and atmosphere meet at the right temperature. Boss arenas are preceded by deliberate silence, which is a small compositional trick that works. The 8-bit pixel art is clean and well-animated, with each level's enemy palette distinct enough that the world feels handcrafted rather than asset-swapped. The honest reservation: Lords of Exile does not try to transcend its inspiration. The shadow abilities and hidden shop areas gesture toward a richer system that never fully opens up, and some critics rightly note the game stays almost too close to the Castlevania template to establish its own identity. If you are coming in cold with no attachment to that era, there are more mechanically ambitious retro throwbacks available. But if you have ever lost an afternoon to Simon Belmont and want something that captures that mood without punishing you like it was 1987, this is well worth a session. Beat it once and Boss Rush and Speed Run modes open up, along with Lyria as a second playable character with a different feel.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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