Con-version: The Messenger

While the main lines at the Nintendo booth at EGLX were looking at the new Smash Brother and Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, I got a chance to check out a recent release from Sabotage Studio that pays homage to some of the great games of the past, “The Messenger”

The whole concept of this game comes from being a ninja after the end of the world. It’s got an amazing sense of humor to it that pays respect to its source material and leans heavily on the fourth wall with the jokes. It also has some fun twists on the classic controls, such as not having a typical double jump but instead what they call “cloud step”.

The way this works is, once you hit something, you can jump again. This applies to enemy projectiles after an early upgrade as well. Doing this as well as some other upgrades that come along create a great sense of flow whereby late in the game you don’t even need to touch the ground. In fact, doing that will slow you down. One of the other crazy parts of this game’s mechanics is that it actually switches between 8-bit and 16-bit style.

This is where the game gets crazy. Not only can you switch between the two, but the world changes slightly. Some platforms might be gone, new dangers might show up, etc. On top of that, the music shifts from an 8-bit NES library to a 16-Bit Genesis library. Both the music and graphics shift seamlessly, and the music has an added bonus of muffling if you go underwater.

I don’t want to give too much about this game away, but it is absolutely worth checking out. It’s available on the Switch and on Steam & GOG.