Original Release: Kyrieru, 2017, PC
Welcome to Wonder Boy … after dark! Our sword-wielding hero embarks on a perilous journey where the biggest danger seems to be getting husbando’d up by some freaky creature w/ big nats
Eroico (PC, Kyrieru, 2017)
Where to Buy: Itch.io (lowest price online, free demo of level 1 also available)
The graphics recall the vintage Wonder Boy games, and the gameplay is definitely inspired by Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Neither of those games had horny monster women mounting you when you’re stunned by damage, though. Unless there was Game Genie codes I didn’t know about.
You kinda have to make up your own story for this one, as it furnishes you with no dialogue or exposition whatsoever. Hero Boy embarks on some journey through three levels packed with about a dozen types of monster girls, but for all I know he’s invading their lands to collect pelts or something. The one thing that’s clear is that the monster girls are absolutely gagging for 🍆. After a couple consecutive hits, or one big enough blow, our hero will be knocked to the ground for about three seconds at which time any monster gals aware of him will make an amorous beeline for him. You’ll then have to button-mash to get out of their forcible embraces.
Getting cuddled by them doesn’t seem to have much more of an effect than being an annoyance, however; you seem to be able to sit there forever and just watch the fun, yon hero never running out of his seemingly endless supply of gallon milk jugs of manly humours. Your quest for glory only comes to an abrupt end when you run out of health, at which point the nearest monster girl apparently ropes you into a committed relationship while you’re exhausted.
The game only has three levels, but they’re fairly long and have all sorts of little Mario World-like obscure branches in which you can find assorted power-ups. Still, the overall playtime without dying is probably about 45 minutes, so it’s padded out with a lot of fiddly sequences that require a precise series of moves to get through. Those aside, though, the gameplay is quite strong. It is quite reminiscent of SotN minus the RPG elements, more like Alucard transported into Rondo of Blood; our hero wields a set of similar moves such as a back dash and quarter-turn sword dash attack, plus he can kinda corkscrew attack on the heads on monster ladies a la Mario World. Each of the monster girls has one or two approaches that work really well, but the devil is in dealing with multiple of them at once and/or with added environmental hazards.
My one big gameplay complaint is that it’s too easy to accidentally fire off the hero’s sword beam while doing other moves. This thing is basically a limited tool that lets you skip some of the more annoying fights by simply sniping a monster girl (or several, once it’s powered up to explode and produce shrapnel) from across the screen. Refill opportunities are pretty rare, however, and it’s too easy to accidentally belt it off a bunch of times while doing a variety of different jumping moves and attacks. The game has native gamepad support but a couple of buttons are unused that could have been devoted to this, instead it’s done by holding up + attacking which is also prone to happen when you’re jumping around trying to hit stuff.
Aside from the solid gameplay (which can be enjoyed on its own in a work- and family-safe environment by turning off the naughty content at the main menu), the game’s primary appeal is in its detailed old-school sprite work. The backgrounds are nothing special but a lot of care (and a very good animation frame count) was put into the hero and his eventual monster girl harem, and it looks more like the vintage high-skill high-effort sprite work of old than the modern “faux retro” garbage you usually get.
It is a bit short on overall content but I’d say it’s also fairly priced (at $5 USD on Itch.io, higher on Steam and elsewhere), and the one-level free demo is fairly substantial. I’d say it’s worth picking up if for nothing else than to support a quality old-school spriter in potentially taking on bigger game projects in the future.
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