Combining the nostalgia of the arcade and the local video store, RetroRealms‘ first release delivers two horror classics, Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead, in the form of 2D beat ‘em up platformers. Both franchises are brought to life with a beautiful 16-bit pixel art style that creates an enticing package that’s full of reverence for the source material.
RetroRealms itself is a hub that you add games to as DLC, and these are the first two releases for the platform. When you launch it, you’re placed in an arcade, which you traverse in first person, where you can interact with the machines you’ve purchased, as well as various extras that you unlock throughout play. Halloween and Ash vs. Evil Dead play pretty similarly, both featuring a combination of combat and platforming from a side scrolling perspective.
Interestingly, you can select which of the characters you want to play when you start a game, allowing you to send Michael Myers through Ash’s quest and vice versa. There are subtle differences between the two, but their movesets are similar enough that the game works with both of them. There’s a certain novelty to seeing Michael Myers hop into Ash’s Delta, so it’s a nice touch, especially when you add in the possibility of DLC characters, which were not available to me during the review period.
I should preface this review by saying that I came to this game as a fan of the movie franchises, not necessarily as a fan of 2D platformers. While the flavor of the franchises is great, it was a bit of a challenge for me to adapt to a playstyle that I’m not as well versed in. I definitely came across pain points in the game where it challenged me, but I think those difficulty spikes were issues with the game design rather than my unfamiliarity.
The mechanics of the game start with a simple base and add a few wrinkles as you go. For the most part, you’ll be doing lots of jumping platforming challenges, navigating your way around moving platforms while dealing with various enemies through a combination of melee and ranged attacks. You have simple slashes, with Ash’s chainsaw and Michael’s knife, that can be aimed in the cardinal directions, as well as a charge move that can cover a bit more range, a shotgun blast for Ash and a knife rush for Michael. There’s also a dodge move that will give you a couple frames of invincibility to help you avoid enemy attacks as you dance between them and their projectiles. You can also pick up various subweapons that run on a limited ammo supply, giving you a few options for ranged combat.
Despite this simplicity, sometimes I felt like I was fighting the controls a bit more than I should be for a game that requires very quick response time. The dodge in particular felt a little clumsy, requiring you to crouch and press a button to perform it, which was an extra step that made me not utilize it very much. Occasionally the platforming itself would feel slightly unresponsive, not jumping exactly when I thought it would, making areas with moving platforms and conveyor belts feel more frustrating than they should.
One of the big gimmicks is that you’re able to shift into a Nightmare Realm at any point in the game, which is another version of the level that has slight variations. Different enemy placements, missing walls, and extra platforms are the type of things that you’ll find here, and shifting will be necessary for collecting a lot of the extra bits that the game has to offer. There’s three specific collectibles in each level, pumpkins for Halloween stages and Necronomicon pages for the Evil Dead ones, and finding all three will give you a bonus at the end of level. You’ll also find tickets hidden throughout, which give you access to some of the unlockables you can buy in the arcade. The Nightmare Realm gimmick was an interesting one, but it didn’t feel as essential to me as I thought it would, leading me to forget about it most of the time until I came across a collectible that I could see but not reach.
As you progress through the levels, you’ll be able to purchase upgrades for each character, either stat upgrades or new moves for your arsenal. The Nightmare Realm offers you a higher challenge that rewards you with more currency, so it can be worth the risk in order to obtain these upgrades. Some of the moves you can get, like a ground pound or uppercut, can be key additions to your repertoire, but for some reason the controls for the new moves are buried a couple clicks into menus, making them easy to miss even after you buy them.
A sinister being known as the Overlord acts as the primary antagonist for both characters. In Ash vs. Evil Dead, he’s trying to harness the power of the Necronomicon, while in the Halloween story, he’s trying to make Michael Myers into one of his minions, stealing the tombstone of his dead sister to try to control him. These give you just enough story to get you through the very arcade-y setup, interacting with you in end of level cutscenes that introduce the boss fights with snippy dialog from Ash and stoic silence from Michael.
The enemy variety in the game ranges from basic humanoids to horrible creatures that bleed over from the Nightmare Realm. All of them are beautifully rendered in a pixelated art style, creating grotesque visages that are easy to identify from a distance. The unique silhouettes help you tell the enemies apart, which is key to success as you navigate the areas. Despite being identifiable, I did think some of the enemies felt a little unfair in ways that were irritating instead of challenging. For example, there were flying bug-like creatures that would sting you and reverse your controls, which felt really annoying while you waited for it to wear off.
Bosses are equally great looking, often referencing fun elements of the respective cinematic universes, but are mixed in quality gameplay-wise. Some of them have patterns that are fun to learn and feel satisfying when you are able to dodge around their attacks, but others aren’t as successful. In particular, I didn’t care for the second boss in the Halloween game, which featured a wide selection of attacks that were pretty easy to dodge, but precious few opportunities to attack, making for a battle that was more tedious repetition than satisfying execution.
All these enemies explode in some wonderful pixelated blood, leaning into the over the top blood of the franchises. There’s a satisfying squelch as you slice up your enemies, sending fountains of red pixels all over the screen. As an added cherry on top to the audio experience, there’s some great remixes of the classic scores that play throughout to really enhance the atmosphere of the games.
There are some really great iconic locations that you’ll travel through, and the pixel art style really shines with the backgrounds. Places like the iconic cabin in the woods and Michael’s mental institution are lovingly recreated, with lots of great little animations going on in the periphery. The Nightmare Realms also look sharp, adding a throughline that connects both games effectively.
The level design of the stages feels good for the most part, with a lot of little tricks throughout to spice up the platforming. You’ll have to deal with moving platforms, conveyor belts, and oil slick surfaces which all require precise timing to deal with. There’s even some wall jumping involved, which seemed a bit out of place for Michael Myers and Ash to be doing, but its addition to the platforming possibilities made it worth it even if it looked a bit goofy. There were several areas that I found to be difficulty spikes, stacking one too many of the gimmicks on top of each other. I’m sure that platforming fans will find those sequences more entertaining, but as someone coming to RetroRealms more for the franchises than the genre, I found myself frustrated more often than I would like.
Luckily for franchise fans, there’s some really fun collectibles that you can unlock. Using the tickets you collect in the levels, you can purchase nice little 3D models of iconic items from the two franchises, which are displayed in a nice little museum section of the arcade. Each of the items can be examined and rotated, accompanied by a little description. There’s also some behind the scenes videos you can watch from the creators of the game, explaining certain parts of their process. I ended up wanting to see more of these videos, so hopefully that will be expanded in future RetroRealms releases.
These collectibles give you a nice incentive to replay the game and attempt to find all its hidden secrets. Each of the games has ten levels a piece, and those ten levels can probably be beaten in about two hours or so, depending on your skill level. There’s also online leaderboards, so high score chasing can be another incentive to revisit them over and over, just like a classic arcade cabinet.
Halloween and Evil Dead have been featured in games in the past few years, both of them are in Dead by Daylight and Evil Dead had its own asymmetrical multiplayer game, but the RetroRealms releases do a great job justifying their existence as love letters to the franchises. Even though their stories revolve around a new antagonist, the nostalgia evoked by returning to iconic locations is strong here. While I sometimes felt like I was running into irritating difficulty spikes, I had a good time revisiting these franchises in a gorgeous 16-bit pixel art form. There’s a lot of potential in the RetroRealms platform, and I hope that future games under this umbrella can continue their reverent recreations while being a little more of an even experience.
Review codes provided by publisher.
RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead and Halloween launch October 18 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch.
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