Have you heard the word of the most underrated beat'em up of all time? It's full 2D, like a platformer, instead of having a depth axis like most games in the genre, and you can keep flying forever, alternating between jump and dash; something you'll
need to do in some stages.
It's so tightly designed in its mechanics, I fall in love with it every time I boot it up. The more you dodge and damage enemies, the more damage you take, but the more damage you can potentially do through heavy attacks - but your score also gets multiplied like crazy. You can either burn this accumulated "risk" through your heavy attacks or blow it all to recover HP - but the minimum risk to heal gets higher for the next use.
The bosses are just 10/10, a beautiful chaos while challenging every skill and move you can do.
Also, every stage is unlocked from the get go, so you can just jump in into whatever challenge you want at any time.
Oh look, it's just the best twin stick shooter since Geometry Wars and Super Stardust and nobody payed attention.
Bleed is a must play if you enjoy chasing S ranks and high scores in arcade games. It's a run and gun - one button shoots or slashes (there are are 6ish weapons IIRC) and the other activates bullet time. Quickly press jump twice or thrice to do 8-way dashes and barely dodge enemies attacks and rise your style rank.
Great, great bosses and a high octane last stage.
Sequel is good too, but not as challenging, well paced or interesting boss-wise, but adds co-op.
More people need to know about the greatness of Half-minute hero 1 and 2.
Listen to this poster! You can't say you love videogames or RPGs without having played Half-Minute Hero. If possible, I recommend playing the first one on the PSP.
Odallus The Dark Call
If you need a Castelvania / Shinobi fix, I got you.
YES. Odallus is amazing, and for the life of me I don't know how it didn't become the next indie darling.
100% Dustforce
The game is a pretty difficult platformer. I'm pretty poor at explaining games but that's the gist of it. 4 zones and they all are pretty difficult then it all culminates to the final levels dubbed "Virtual" levels. These are insanely difficult. I've played since 2014 and have 300+ hours in the game and never beat all of them
. Then on top of that there are I believe 100~ community stages that the devs hand picked and put into the game. Which all go from really cool ideas/aesthetics to really difficult.
Also the music is done by Lifeformed so it's amazing.
Here's a sampling of the music
So yea this game is amazing I still play it now an again. It's really great for just grinding out stages if you get stuck because it doesn't feel frustrating it's a very relaxed grind that you could just go on for hours. So if you enjoy fairly fast-paced platformer with an amazing art style, tons of levels, great music, and a very difficult end game then this is for you.
One of the most satisfying and relaxing platfomers I've ever played.
