Steel Assault

Heavily inspired by games like Megaman and Contra, Steel Assault provides 16-bit retro action gameplay that looks and sounds incredible – but may prove to be too frustrating unless you’re part of its very specific audience
Originally announced through a 2015 Kickstarter as an 8-bit side-scrolling action game citing inspirations from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Steel Assault ended up as a 16-bit title that feels right at home at consoles like the Gameboy Advance (GBA). Emulating the style of the era, Steel Assault offers a mix of platforming and combat action that looks and sounds amazing – but also offers as an overall high difficulty level that might not be for everyone.
While the platforming sections themselves aren’t much of an obstacle on their own, the difficulty in Steel Assault stems from dozens enemies constantly appearing, often quite suddenly, as well as their ongoing barrage of projectiles to avoid. Unsurprisingly however, it’s the boss fight at the end of each of the five stages that prove to be the real skill checks, with attack patterns to avoid and just enough openings left to attack their weak spots.
However, while high difficulty by itself doesn’t need to be detrimental to the overall game experience, Steel Assault features some unfortunate design decisions that make game-overs feel frustrating rather than motivating enough to keep trying. These range from un-skippable intro/boss cutscenes that play every time (!) when dying at the beginning of a stage or during a boss fight, since the otherwise frequent auto-checkpoints are badly set, to some weird hitboxes – large bosses in particular feature can make it hard to discern whether touching certain body parts results in immediate damage or not.
In addition, Steel Assault doesn’t telegraph some sudden enemy appearances & certain boss attacks well enough, which often leaves the player with too little time to react properly. As a result, some first-time deaths may feel quite undeserved, making it seem like dying to an enemy is the only way to obtain the information required to avoid them. While some players may prefer slowly learning the ins and outs of a level through a trial-and-error approach like this, I’m of the opinion that a game – platformers in particular - should always offer enough information, e.g. in the form of telegraphs, that with sufficient skill, first-timing a level should be possible. Depending on the intended difficulty, the skill level required may be higher or lower of course - but dying only due to missing information (e.g. a boss attack suddenly filling almost the entire screen or an enemy immediately appearing in front of you) isn’t fun, as surviving those surprises is left to chance rather than player agency.
In sum, these design decisions (un-skippable cutscenes, weird hitboxes, insufficient telegraphs) can turn Steel Assault into a rather frustrating retro action experience instead of a hard-and-rewarding one. As such, it’s not surprising that despite its short overall runtime – beating the game on “normal”, the second-hardest difficulty mode, only took me about 3 hours – many players seem to have dropped Steel Assault early on. To illustrate, only 34.5% of players on Steam managed to beat the second boss of the game - considering the short runtime and the game only featuring five bosses overall, one for each stage available, this is saying something.
As such, I’d only recommend Steel Assault to players with a high frustration tolerance – or those who don’t mind trial-and-error approaches, even if the “trial” part is drawn out thanks to the un-skippable cutscenes. Steel Assault does offer a lot to love otherwise – the visuals and the soundtrack are fantastic, the controls precise and while I found the grappling hook feature to be somewhat janky, it thankfully wasn’t overutilized. However, if you’re just looking for a great retro action game to have a nice evening with, consider picking one of the easier difficulty modes – or other games entirely.

Incredibly tight design, insisting every screen needs your full attention. Some segments absolutely feel like pure BS when you first play them though. I can see this game scaring away a lot of players. believe me, I'm one of them having played the game for an hour, put it down, and didn't pick it back up for a whole year.
came back to it and beat it over a few days. Lots of stuff feels like it's going to be impossible. It's possible to no hit this game, it's a consistent game too. If you pick it up, stick to it.
The art is fantastic, the music hits the right tone. I mean, you can just see and hear it from the trailers.
I love this game, it's not for everyone.

Really good. High-quality throwback to 16-bit action platformers. The gameplay is most similar to the traditional Castlevania titles with shades of Contra, Metal Slug and Mega Man X. Appropriately short, with multiple higher difficulty modes. I wish the soundtrack tended more towards the SNES-style X games instead of the PS1 but that's a minor gripe. The graphics speak for themselves and the animation looks great.

Whoa, not bad, not bad at all!
A love letter to old Mega Drive arcade platformers!
With awesome eye-candy pixel art, great tight gameplay, tough levels, even tougher bosses, and a crazy good soundtrack to top it all off.
Made me remember some old games I erased from my memory. Good stuff!

Perfect. Pays tribute to 16 bit action platformers you know and love while also feeling very distinct from its inspirations. Just a super lean, hour long action game experience. A normal playthrough had just enough friction to keep me engaged, going "god this part is *ridiculous*" with a smile on my face. Looking forward to what higher difficulties and arcade mode have in store. Really looking forward to Neon Inferno.

8.5

Wow this game is absolutely gorgeous. Really good gameplay too although I didn't like the hook gimmick too much. It's not that it was badly done, it just wasn't my cup of tea. But I still enjoyed it and it was used intelligently during the level design.
Really good game.

That was quick, hahaha. I think people would have gotten more mileage from this game if Arcade Mode was the default. I won't fault it for being short since it's hard enough that even with infinite lives that come with normal mode and a save file, it took me an hour and a half. And half an hour was spent on the final boss.
Just keep in mind that if you're going to play this game that it leaves no clues for you in terms of navigating the stages, no hints for what to do later, so you may come upon a sequence where you're like "Wait, how do I do this without getting hit", and "How do I get up there"? The second stage was maybe the hardest for whatever odd reason, it gives you a small platform with an enemy that sprays you and leaves a lingering hurtbox on the platform you have. Again, absolutely possible to do. Immediately after that, a mid-boss which I died to six times only to finally figure out that you need to double jump and then suspend yourself in the air for just a moment longer with the zipline to have just enough clearance to get over its charge attack. Immediately after that, a waterfall in which I seriously spent seven minutes baffled as to what to do when I got to the top because I couldn't get a hold with ziplines anywhere, only for a vertical based one to finally work. Very odd. But then the second boss itself feels like a cakewalk in comparison. And then stage 4 was just easier overall including the boss, and then stage 5 itself felt easier than 2, 3, and 4, only to ramp up for the boss' second phase because figuring out how to damage the boss while also avoiding the electrified floor might take you a minute. And if you have full health you can just bum rush the boss if you want.
All of this to say that the difficulty progression is uneven and the game has a LOT of trial and error, which I guess is like older arcade games did. And having infinite lives and being able to continue from the most recent stage made me feel like I didn't really accomplish anything, though. It's tough recommending this, but I will only because the mechanics themselves are pretty sound and the presentation is excellent.