Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom

I've started playing Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom. It's a gorgeous 2D platformer with some interesting mechanics.

Went back to playing Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom and after some initial confusion of where the right path is, the game opens up and it's a wonderful 2D platformer with great metroidvania elements. After defeating a certain boss I unlocked the new snake form, which is used for traversal up walls and in small places.

After exploring the Crystal Caverns with the help of the new snake form I faced the level boss - the Ancient Frog, which was very creative and forced you to utilise both your pig and snake abilities. His defeat rewarded me with the frog form, which seemed weird at first, because it was slow and heavy contrary to what you'd expect. It turns out it's the first transformation that can wear armour and it auto equipped the heavy boots from before. Other than that it provides some great traversal options.

With the help of the Frog transformation I explored the Ancient Temple level. The music here is fantastic and a real ear worm. After defeating the Temple Guardian I unlocked the lion form, which has a charged dash ability.

Completing some underwater adventures lead to a battle with the ghost pirate captain. Then there was a radical level change from the depths of the sea to the skies to an fiery volcano, which requires some protective gear.

The levels in the Volcano were quite challenging and required full utilisation of the transformations and the newly acquired ice armour.

I had to complete some more challenging levels in the Volcano to reveal that in the centre of it there lives a surprisingly buff dragon, who of course you have to fight to obtain the dragon form. Then the battle continues in the skies and then in the sea where you face another boss.

Unsurprisingly it turns out that Mysticat is ulterior motives and kidnapped one of the scholar with knowledge about the transformation orb and locked him the castle dungeon. To save him I had to endure some mildly frustrating stealth sections. The adventure then lead me to a hauted mansion to restore the full potential of my dragon form by getting it back from that thief Malino.

The Haunted Mansion is filled with tons of environmental puzzles and annoying ghost enemies. On the bright side of things I unlocked the Dragon form's true potential with unlimited flight and a flamethrower attack.

The misadventures in the Haunted Mansion continued with a fiddly physics based puzzle and a tough boss battle that required some Psycho Mantis-like twist to complete.

The adventure turned towards a more open world direction since I had to find the 3 ancient relics. I managed to discover 2 after solving a somewhat tricky puzzle and and completing a series of challenges. The 3rd one involved a cool retro stage.

Going to back to the castle to save Jin's drunk uncle led to a puzzle-boss fight against him, which was somewhat frustrating and ended up in Mysticat turning everybody to stone and stealing all the orbs. When all was lost the owners of the 3 mystical relics came to save the day and free our heroes. Now Jin has to go to the Dark Realm and retrieve all of his previous transformations.

While exploring the Dark Realm I found a map pointing to where I can find the parts of the Golden Sword needed to remove some barriers. Once I forged it I was finally able to unlock my pig transformation by completing another polygon level.

After exploring the Dark Realm some more I discovered another map showing where all the golden pieces for the ultimate armour are located. I decided to collect them before heading into the final battle.

Finally found the whole Golden Armour set and discovered every chest and upgrade in the game (including a really tricky one in the Haunted Mansion that tormented me for a while). Next is facing the final boss.

After a brutal boss battle with Lord Xaros, which involved some puzzles and a lot of thinking on your feet (and some armour exploits) Jin finished him in an awesome animated cutscene and restored the kingdom to its normal state.

The game overall is fantastic. It looks beautiful, the controls are tight and each form has its uses within the levels, who are designed really well. There are some really catchy tunes in there that contribute to the overall atmosphere. Exploring the world and finding all the secrets was a joy (even if some of them were quite obscure). The story is pretty straightforward, but good enough to push you forward and the characters are quite charming. There are tons of gaming references including from previous titles in the Wonder Boy series. I can easily recommend this game to fans of Metroidvanias and platformer titles.