Clunky Hero

Review

Clunky Hero is a metroidvania game featuring a humoristic premise: the Hero needs to rescue his wife from the Evil One who turned her into a duck-faced doll girl. Most of the comedy lies in the prologue area where we can talk to a few NPCs and know more about the setting. I’m saying comedy, but the truth is that the game never got me to laugh despite trying multiple times with quirky dialogues, item descriptions and meta-references.

We start the game at the protagonist’s village, with no clear indications on where we should go. I went to the right only to realize the path was blocked and should have gone to the left instead. Although it looks pretty, the level design is too vague and there isn’t any clue about where to find the Hero’s wife or why we should move to a different area. The game doesn’t set a goal that makes us willing to explore and follow the story.

During our journey we can receive a few side quests, most likely by the same villagers from the prologue who seem to be the only NPCs left in this world. It would have been nice to meet new characters in other areas and make side quests more interesting since they only consist in finding an item or a person and then returning back to the quest-giver. Fortunately there is a fast travel option that can be used in exchange for some coins.

In its current state, the game lacks any difficulty (and there is no option to select it). Monsters just come towards us, so it’s easy to smash them away using only one button and without giving them time to start the attack. If they do, we must manually retreat or jump to avoid their attack. Enemies respawn each time we leave the area, which can a bother at times, especially considering there are only a few types. I think they could just respawn after saving, like seen in many other videogames.The combat feels basic and unchallenging for a game of this genre; if we get hurt, we can find or buy healing items that make everything way too easy. There is no strategy involved and even boss fights are quite easy to beat, though they don’t show any health bar at the moment, so we are left wondering how many hits they need to go down. The UI also needs some improvements as it looks dated and unfriendly to navigate.

The entire RPG aspect is missing and thus any form of character progression. No skills to unlock, no customization options (except a few basic ones like changing our weapon) and overall no way to gain experience from combat. We only get a few soft skills (like double jumping) after defeating some bosses, while beating everyone else only rewards us with coins that we can spend buying a few items or treasure maps.

Technically, the 2.5D graphics look nice and the performance is silky smooth. I only encountered one serious bug that forced me to reload the game multiple times. In some parts the camera stopped focusing on our Hero, falling down and losing its centre. Obviously, the game is still in early access and, while the 0.92 version I played was quite polished, there may be other issues that need to be addressed.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

Clunky Hero Steam Store Page