ITORAH

Review

Your name is Itorah, and you wake up suspended in a cocoon made of spider webs somewhere in a cave. To make things even stranger, a talking axe is trapped in the same chamber, and it cannot escape either. It takes all your remaining strength to free yourself and rescue the talking axe that refers to itself as the Greatest Warrior. Both of you come to the same conclusion: it’s time to find a way out of this predicament. But that’s not the worst of it, as Itorah discovers that she is the only human left alive in a world inhabited by fluffy talking creatures facing extinction due to, as they call it, the Black Plague.  

Itorah is an action platformer game developed by Grimbart Tales and published by
Assemble Entertainment on the 22^nd of March 2022 on the Steam platform.

The game consists of six levels, including a semi-tutorial blended into the first stage and five others where you will need to beat four Nahucan guardians and the source of the Black Plague.

What a beautiful game. The Aztec artwork is colourful and a pleasure for the eyes; gorgeous from start to finish. It’s been a while since I have experienced such eye-catching artwork in a platformer game.

The levels are pretty good too, but if you are looking for a challenging platformer game, you will be disappointed as Itorah offers only one difficulty level. Even if the levels are well-structured and of reasonable length, you will probably push through them without dying until you reach a boss fight. Then, you might die once or twice until you figure out how to dispatch each boss. This is due to two things. The first is that there are several campfires in each stage where you can save your progress. It is excellent, and yes, Itorah will receive all her health back, but these campfires are too close to each other and there are probably a few too many per level. The other is that Itorah will run for a while before facing enemies. But don’t get me wrong, you’ll have a lot of fun when she does! And, I really enjoyed the different types of enemies, from the spiders wearing Aztec masks, to the flying Aztec bees with armour, to the Black Plague enemies.  

I also like that Itorah only has a few skills available to her at the start of the game. Dashing, jumping and using the talking axe to slay enemies will be her first few skills. Each level has a shrine, and this shrine holds a dark crystal called an Echo. When she finds it, she will gain access to other skills such as double jumping, dashing while in the air, uppercut attack and throwing the talking axe.

Ahui is the Indiana Jones of the fluffy creatures that Itorah will meet early on in the game. She lives in a village called Chimali where Itorah will need to visit after finishing all the first five levels. There, she will be able to upgrade her health, stamina and healing potions. For this, you’ll need leaves, crystals and shards. She’ll often receive shards after killing an enemy, and she’ll sometimes find them in chests. Leaves and crystals can only be found in chests.

As I mentioned above, the graphics are fabulous, as is the gameplay. But the game is lacking in terms of difficulty. You’ll probably finish the game within eight to eleven hours, taking your time. You can play with the keyboard in terms of controls, but I recommend playing with a gamepad. Itorah can be played in eleven different languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and a few others. I enjoyed my time playing Itorah, but wished there were different levels of difficulty to increase replayability.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

ITORAH Steam Store Page