Retro-Inspired Games As Tough As The Messenger
Flywrench
The Messenger released last month to stellar reviews, with the game being celebrated for its tasteful translation of vintage aesthetics and difficulty curves. The title is drawing favorable comparisons to older Ninja Gaiden games, continuing modern gaming’s love affair with the tropes of yesterday. Other modern titles have pushed gamer’s brains and thumbs just as much as The Messenger, here’s six of the most challenging.
After Meshoff Games’ much-celebrated Nidhogg, the studio released Flywrench, a curious action title that owes as much to the simplicity of Pong as it does the frantic energy of bullet hell games. To make it simple, Flywrench allows players to man an aerobic ship through the depths of space, with the game’s art-style fully embedded in the simplicity of gaming’s primordial days. The challenge lays in evading obstacles whilst switching between three distinct “ship modes,” with each mode associated with a direction and color. Players must pass through corresponding lines via fast reactions and ensuring the correct mode is on the ship. Each mode alters the ship’s polarity which, in layman’s terms, changes the behavior of the ship on impacts and turns. The game starts off a little slow, before its difficulty and pace ramps up immensely. As the pace increases, Flywrench’s systems really come into their own, offering a psychedelic Rez-like experience for the hardcore.
