Griff the Winged Lion Demo

Although video games evolve and change on a regular basis, there are those who sometimes prefer to experience the good old times every now and again, which is why the retro genre is booming at the moment. We might have Unreal Engine 4 and CryEngine 3 today, but there’s a unique charm to the pixelated backgrounds found in SNES titles, or even low-poly 3D environments like in the PlayStation 1 era.

Griff the Winged Lion is a 3D adventure game with heavy platformer elements, in which you get to listen to the story of a lion by the name of Griff. Granted, you actually have five playable characters in total, and they all have unique stories and abilities. The actual game is designed to look and feel like a PS1 platformer, so don’t expect too many new elements in the gameplay department.

The adventure takes you across a variety of fantasy realms, each one of which features a unique feel and a new set of challenges for you to overcome. There are many types of enemies to fight as well, but your primary focus is on the platforming aspect. Thus, it’s important to find as much gold as you can and somehow reach all sorts of isolated platforms by performing carefully coordinated jumps.

One of the most interesting features throughout the game is the ability to turn objects and even enemies into gold, as well as shatter them in order to collect the precious pieces. You can also have a crack at various puzzles along the way, not to mention the tricky boss battles that await you later on. However, the demo is not that friendly in terms of controls or interface at the moment.

It takes quite a while to get used to the controls, especially if you happen to use a mouse and keyboard combo. Granted, the game recommends using a gamepad right off the bat, but then again not everyone has one handy. As far as the graphics are concerned, they are certainly colorful, but the animations need more work, and the developers promise that the final product is going to be much more refined.

At the end of the day, Griff the Winged Lion is far from complete yet, and the demo at hand is a bit too rough around the edges to form a proper opinion. Hence, you can show your support for the project by contributing to the game’s Kickstarter campaign.