Super Alloy Ranger

My first few minutes with Super Alloy Ranger had me doing a double-take at the credits - this is the work of essentially one developer, Mabimogu of Alloy Mushroom, and it plays tighter than most team-built efforts in the genre. The Mega Man X lineage is front and center, and the game does not pretend otherwise. What it earns, though, is the right to wear that influence proudly. The core split is between two characters whose playstyles are genuinely distinct rather than cosmetically different. Kelly is your ranged fighter - a blaster with infinite fire, chargeable shots, and swappable attribute chips that change your projectile behavior. No.2 is the melee counterpart, closer in spirit to Zero, with a wider roster of switchable close-range attacks and the kind of combo flexibility that rewards experimentation. Crucially, your character choice is permanent per save file, which means the game has real replay value baked in from the start - you are committing to a different game each time. Both characters move with a full toolkit: double-jump, mid-air dash, wall-grab, and crawl all present and feeling responsive. The level structure mirrors classic non-linear stage selection, with five areas open at the start and more unlocking as you clear them. Each stage ends in a boss fight that drops a new weapon, and each of the twelve total stages hides 100 collectible blue orbs that level up your weapons up to tier five, rewarding thorough exploration rather than just a clean run. The presentation is where the craft really shows. The chiptune soundtrack leans into SNES sound-chip territory - energetic, punchy, and well-matched to each environment. The pixel art is polished and colorful, with boss sprites that fill the screen and animate with the kind of personality that takes real care to produce. Sunken City and Deep Freeze have distinct visual identities, and the hidden areas tucked behind cracked walls and seemingly lethal pits give the world a sense of depth beyond its side-scrolling surface. Where it stumbles slightly is the story, which arrives in lengthy cutscenes that most reviewers and players agree are skippable without consequence - the narrative of bounty hunters Kelly and Rambos getting stranded on the mechanical planet Tanwada is functional at best, and the lack of voice acting makes the dialogue drag. The difficulty, while variable across three settings, also skews forgiving on normal - pits respawn you on the last platform rather than killing instantly, and hazards deal damage rather than one-shotting. Purists may find that easing frustrating, but it does make the game genuinely accessible to players newer to the genre without gutting the challenge in the back half. There is a minor PC quirk worth noting: the game launches in windowed mode and can reset to it unexpectedly, and some players have flagged a subtle delay when firing special weapons mid-air. Neither is game-breaking, but both are worth knowing. On the upside, native Linux support is a genuine plus for players who have left Windows behind. For anyone who grew up with Mega Man X or Metal Slug and has been waiting for a small, sincere, handcrafted take on that formula - this is the one. It is not reinventing anything, but it knows exactly what it wants to be and executes it with uncommon polish for a debut title. The runtime sits in the short-to-medium range, but two full character runs plus secret hunting give it more staying power than the runtime alone suggests. Kai, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Playable. Runs great on Linux after minor tweaks. Based on 7 ProtonDB community reports.

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