Dandara Trials of Fear Edition 12+

Incredible visuals with intuitive controls. Amazing soundtrack and just a blast to play, was surprised at how well the gameplay works on mobile. Definitely recommend.

I love the warping or jumping movement system. It’s really intuitive and controls super well, and is the perfect way to explore this interesting world. The combat is not the focus of the game, but provides challenging movement to avoid their attacks or run past the enemies and avoid them entirely. In short, the combat makes the movement more engaging and forces you to plan your jumps.

The bosses are also visually stunning and a lot of fun, some of the highlights of the game.

The main focus of the game is exploration. There is a lot of backtracking, but I really enjoyed as each time you go back you’re usually able to access a new area in this old place, making the map feel engaging and full of secrets and unexplored areas. The fast travel system later on in the game also removed a lot of the hassle from back tracking which is a welcome change.

The art style is fairly typical pixel art, but it still looks gorgeous and combined with the lovely backgrounds, really gives a fantastic visual atmosphere. The music is also really well done and blend with visuals making for a nearly perfect atmosphere.

The story is fairly bare bones and vague, but I’m not to heartbroken to be honest. It’s not the focus of the game, but it COULD have been another interesting part of it, but the exploration, boss battles, atmosphere and combat make up for it.

And there’s a lot of content here. Average playtime is about 10 hours, though as really slow player I’ve already spent a lot more. You could spend easily 20 hours in this game, especially if you’re doing reruns of the game to get the secret ending or get full exploration points.

To summarise, fantastic movement and controls, fabulous exploration, some nice combat, great boss battles, Lovely atmosphere and a forgettable story.