Isostasy
Beihnn wants nothing more than to live a quiet, uneventful life in a cabin in the forest. Alas, adventure calls! Take control of Beihnn and attempt to discover the origin of the force that poisons the land in this NES 2D side-scrolling MetroidVania platformer. Explore eight different zones and traverse various types of terrain in search of the power-ups that will allow you to proceed on your quest. Solve puzzles and discover secrets. Fight nine unique bosses. Talk to other characters for hints.
Isostasy began its life as an indie NES game. This is the PC version. It is essentially identical to the NES version, but also includes the ability to save game data to a file, and configure settings such as controller input. If you would like to access the NES rom file, it is included in the files for the game. After installing it, navigate to the directory in which it is installed. Find Isostasy.nes and copy it to your desired directory for play on an emulator or flash cart (do not move it, be sure to leave the original file in place).
Game Discussion
Steam User 2
Great wee game. Overall the level designs where unique enough from biome to biome that it felt like you where going into different zones however the level layouts leave quite a bit to be desired as the game moves on. Lots of repeat terrain layouts.
enemy design was fun and cute bosses where great fun (EXCEPT YOU CAMILLA PIRANHA YOU GIANT FISHY BAM!!!)
overall I ha a good time. Sound track was great tooo!
here is a playlist of me playing it if anyone wants a sneak peak:
Steam User 2
What a blast from the past (while not really being from the past).
Alright this game bothered me a bit as I was playing through cause I noticed persistent pallet swapping.
There is a degree of "copy past" level design that was also starting to grate on me (namely because it adds a sense of tedium to the play experience.) It is very possible to miss components in the game that will radically decrease the difficulty, as I did. I went through the first 2 areas of the game with zero weapon power-ups, which made every enemy super bullet spongy.
Now hear me out, at the end of the game I became aware that this was a game built to be played on an actual NES Cartridge.
Adds a whole dynamic of respect for the product given the limitations that were worked with.
What you get here is a really well crafted NES title. There was no sprite pop, no frame loss, no slowdown. The game runs well, and in general is pretty generous with your time as far as punishing deaths.
Each of the bosses end up being pretty clever, considering the in game mechanics, and end up being unique experiences with each one as opposed to simple "I jump you shoot, rince repeat" affairs that are very common on the "intended platform".
Altogether, this is a NES Metroid-like (Yes I know its in the game description, it would be nice to see an actual metroidvania in future). If you like that era of game design, you will find an entertaining 1-3 hours of game play in this. It uses a password system, so no saving. If you want saving, pull the rom out and run in an NES emulator.
I enjoyed the game. 5 dollars well spent on an indie dev that I would like to see more projects from in the future.