VampireBlaze Demo

Horror stories almost always feature some kind of remote village where technology hasn’t reached yet, which makes it ideal for ancient creatures to reside there. Whether it’s werewolves, ghouls or one of the many vampire breeds, you can be certain to bump into one of them if the town you’re heading into doesn’t have a Wi-Fi hotspot yet.

VampireBlaze is a retro action-platformer in which you have to slay monsters and save a village from being overrun by evil. As you can probably guess, the game is not very complex in any regard, but it can be fun enough to occupy one of your afternoons, at least if you’ve got nothing better to do. On top of it all, it might trigger a pleasant flux of nostalgia.

It’s really not very clear what the story is all about, mainly because both the narrative and the grammar are incoherent. Thankfully, you do not need to know exactly what happens in the background, because the gameplay has nothing to do with the story anyway. Hence, all you need to know is that you are some kind of vampire hunter, and that there are monsters all around you.

Although you start with the ability to kick enemies in order to eliminate them, weapons are a must if you are to survive later on. Hence, swords, axes and all sorts of tools are provided to you over the course of the levels, although the only thing that changes is how much damage they deal per hit. They also come in handy during tough boss fights, although much more than a good axe is needed in those situations.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is very repetitive and very frustrating, which might cause you to quit before you reach even the first boss. Platformers are meant to be challenging, but usually the effort is worth it, which is not the case here. There are too many enemies, they all look the same, and there are barely any checkpoints, which makes it even more annoying.

VampireBlaze may not be too much of a game on its own, but it can serve as good training for the developer to come up with something better. Until then, on the other hand, this is not the type of game you’ll play for longer than a few minutes.