Ghoulboy is truly a haunting experience. I’m not totally sure how this 2D platformer made it to the eShop. I guess maybe it floated through the walls. Do you love broken game mechanics with spelling and grammatical errors? How about unresponsive controls and bipolar hitboxes? Go find your Ouija board now!

I was really excited to play Ghoulboy. I love 2D platformers and love retro games even more; love ghouls and love boys. Surely I was in for a fun and memorable gaming experience? I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.

Lost in Translation?

Ghoulboy introduced me to the land of Gunzabar, which (was?) where “witches, ghouls and lots of spooky monsters live in.” Not off to the greatest start with what I’m assuming is a poor translation, disappointing for a game that sits at £8.99 but I guess easily fixed, I decided to play on.



A Long Time Ago, in an Unfinished Game

I’m not… totally sure what this means. After confirming with my boyfriend that I was not having a stroke, we tried to decode the rest of the story introduction. I think the basic premise is that some bad guys locked up your father? Honestly, this was a jarring opening to experience. I’ve only been playing for a few minutes and I feel like Ghoulboy either isn’t finished or at least hasn’t been translated well.

Jumping into Ghoulboy my immediate impressions of the game universe were that it is actually pretty beautiful, it captures the 16-bit, 2D platform, retro era well. The colouring and shading of the pixels gives the games aesthetic a dark and bleak feeling.

With towering forest trees that have spooky red eyes blinking underneath them and skulls under the ground, graphically the game impressed me. I had fun in my initial minutes jumping around and playing with the very basic 2D platformer mechanics.

Kid’s got spirit

You can jump, swipe two different swords and also throw some small swords and spears. The real diversity in the mechanics of this platformer comes from the spear. You can use this to pin into walls and traverse your way around the levels. This is actually a really fun way to make your way around Ghoulboy. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only part of Ghoulboy that works. No, I am not kidding.

As with most 2D platformers, you’ve got monsters to fight as you make your way through the level. For the most part, visually, all of the monsters are well-designed. They all seem pretty unique and suitable to the surrounding environment. Unfortunately, they are not programmed well.

This is Frustrating

Hitboxes do not calculate properly. Your weapons all do the same damage but often don’t work against the enemies at all. The sword swipes up and in the direction you’re facing but doesn’t actually do any damage upwards. This is infuriating whereas the enemy will have their battle animation right into you and somehow get 3 hits around you.

This is just one example, all of the other monsters follow similar broken buggy variations that lead to an incredibly frustrating combat experience.

. . .This is so Incredibly Frustrating

It feels like the character you are controlling and the enemies are in different games being played simultaneously. You are often found swinging your sword directly into the enemy with no luck as they phase right through you and take your entire health bar. And not in the “Damn, it killed me but I totally should’ve got that, right?” way. In the, “What the hell is happening right now, am I being trolled? Wait – they’re putting this game on the eShop?” way.

A lot of the time I think Ghoulboy simply does not recognise the controls you’re putting in, and when it does it’s late.

It’s not Me, It’s You

The rewards monsters drop are also impossible to see before you pick them up, so you have to just figure out what it was. This is also the same for treasure chests. Sometimes in Ghoulboy, you need to get past a locked door by finding a key. The key can seemingly be on an enemy or in a treasure chest, but since the loot drops can happen so quickly (and you don’t see them) you never know if you’ve got the key. It’s another frustrating experience.

At this point, I wish I could ghost Ghoulboy like a bad date.

Luckily I decided to take a break at this point and discovered the unholy queen bug of all bugs. Allowing me to avoid the slog through this game’s entire “story”.

TEST FONT

Actually, I first saw this when I went back to the main menu. I haven’t seen it since this one time but umm. Yeah, that really does say TEST FONT. I shared this moment with the other Nindie Nexus writers in our “author’s watercooler” Discord channel and we definitely had a good laugh. But really, if I had just paid £8.99 for Ghoulboy I’d be really disappointed and annoyed and would probably request a refund.

After closing Ghoulboy because it had completely stopped working for the third time I went back to the main menu, TEST FONT was gone (like a ghoulboy in the night) and replaced with CHAPTERS. Oh! Neat! I can go back to the chapter I was at before and then continue playing the game? Nope. It’s broken. And it pushed me onto a few random levels before leading me straight to the last level of the game.

No, I’m still not kidding. This game is so broken, buggy and annoying. I’m confused as to how this made it onto the eShop honestly. But I guess it’s a dream for speedrunners?

No Regrets . . . Well, Maybe One

The final boss fight was impossible to defeat. With the games bugged out mechanics and bizzaro programming, I finally laid my journey to rest. I will never know how the epic tale of Ghoulboy will end.

At this point I just decided to start listing the extra bugs I found instead of seriously reviewing Ghoulboy because it is… unfinished, to be generous.

If you land on anything in Ghoulboy that isn’t flat your character will not like that. Playing this game is like hitting yourself in the head with a brick repeatedly on the enjoyment scale.

I managed to climb up to the top of one of the earlier levels and the whole thing was just . . . empty. At this point in Ghoulboy, the empty part of the game turns out to be the best part, though.

I could keep going but I think you get the point. Also, I feel like I’m doing the job that someone who was making this game should’ve done by listing all the bugs. I just don’t want to play this game anymore.

Conclusion

Ghoulboy is undoubtedly the worst game I have played yet on my Nintendo Switch. I like 2D platformers. I loved Celeste. It was hard because it was designed beautifully to be that way. Ghoulboy is hard because it is broken and, in my opinion, is not a finished product worthy of being on the Nintendo eShop.

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