Berserk Boy

I absolutely loved Berserk Boy – enough to want to come back for more thanks to its fast-paced platforming, fluid combat, incredible soundtrack, and nostalgia-bomb of SNES-era gaming. This 2D action-platformer is worth the ride so you can GO BERSERK!!

Berserk Boy is a splendid and profound work, with a brilliant and lively game design, powerful and direct, capable of impressing and offering an engaging experience. To be had and propagated with joy, as this production is destined to be a yardstick.

Overall, Berserk Boy takes much more from the likes of Mega Man than it does the Metroidvania genre. This is not a bug, it’s a feature. I for one am very happy we got a high-speed action Mega Man in 2024. If you enjoy retro platformers, get out there and play Berserk Boy.

Indie developer Zu Ehtisham layers the references thickly, offering nods to Mega Man, Azure Striker Gunvolt, and even Sonic the Hedgehog. But despite the occasional feeling of familiarity, Berserk Boy’s frenzied action is distinctive and delightfully rhythmic. Anyone with an affinity for the 16-bit era should give the demo a go.

A game that certainly isn't shy about what it is, Berserk Boy is a love letter to the Sonic the Hedgehog and Mega Man franchises. While there are arguably some slight concerns along the way on the design front, those shortcomings are overshadowed by fun and addicting gameplay. The game manages to pay great respect to the games that influenced it and still stand on its own at the end. Fans of both classic franchises will certainly enjoy going Berserk!

Berserk Boy bursts onto a crowded market of platformers in a strong flash of inspiration. With its literally game-changing form system, energetic soundtrack, and impactful visual design, it’s a game well worth playing to the end. It just doesn’t make as strong of an argument for you to stick around after the credits in its current state.

With the good outweighing the bad, Berserk Boy is another good game for an indie industry that isn't afraid to try put out fun and small games. It does need ironing out in some places but all in all, this is a great game.

The game is so fun! I am not usually a platformer gamer but I am getting better and better the more I play it and it is so satisfying! I love the smooth movements, the art style, and Kei just looks so cool! People should definitely buy this and get addicted to that nice feeling when you can do multiple combos :)

Although uninspired at some points, Berserk Boy has good gameplay which, together with an impeccable soundtrack, makes it an interesting experience for fans of the genre.

I feel a bit bad giving a 6 to Berserk Boy. It looks decent, it doesn't sound bad, controls are quite good, I just think it's kinda boring. As the game progresses you get access to different forms, but apart from the starter set and the ninja set, they kinda ****. In a game that moves swiftly and quickly, why would I use a form that doesn't have a dash? The game's built around speed, 3 out of 5 of these forms are slow. Level design - as fast and fluid as it often is - is still kinda bland. There are like 5 or maybe 6 different enemy types in the whole game, things get repetitive real fast. Oh no, I've just beat a boss, that means the ship is under attack. Again. I dunno, I want more from this game. Still, it's not without merit, but it's definitely not a must-play in my mind.

I really wanted to like this game. Unfortunately, it gets a LOT wrong. It seems to be a case of lots of great ideas, talented people, and very low quality control. Almost everything in the game feels underbaked. The pixel art is undeniably beautiful. And yet, some visual choices are strange or overlooked. The "alert!" symbol that tells you where an enemy will appear on screen is a layer under any flashing red translucent lights, meaning this visual is hard to see. It should be on one of the top layers to make it visually clear. It seems like a minor thing--and it is--but the game is full of a lack of attention to detail for these sorts of things. The hand-drawn graphics that occasionally appear have a very different resolution, and look like they've been blown up to 4-5x their original size, making them look muddy, pixelated, and out of place. The lack of tutorials is awful. Sure, there are some signs for a few things, but many mechanics are just not explained well and require experimentation, damage, and death before you figure it out. A lot of the moves feel like the team went "oh this is cool!" and just added it in without thinking about how it affects the whole. For example, if you jump towards a floor from below, at the arc of your jump, your character will automatically give a little kick up that gives you a boost. This is totally unnecessary and messes up your movement flow. Many of the moves are totally useless, and the main attack mechanic (dashing into an enemy and discharging electricity) often leads to you taking collision damage. Ugh. A few times in the game, you get teleported back to the hub, which is unnecessarily large and empty and boring, and you have to work your entire way through it killing easy enemies. It's entirely pointless. On the Switch version, after I got around 3/4 of the way through the game, the game would crash every time I completed a level and loaded a new level. That was extremely annoying. I wanted to like this game. The gameplay is decent enough, but can get repetitive. The music is great and the pixel art is beautiful. It's often compared to Mega Man, but it's nothing alike. It's closer to Mega Man Zero, but with more chaotic, random design, and less consideration, care, and deliberateness. Edit: I moved the score down to 4/10 because now the game crashes after every single level, and it takes a long time to load up the game, load levels, etc. And after collecting all medals, every time I try to load the true final stage, the game crashes. Bravo.

This could have been a really fun game. The first power that you get allows you to freely dash around in the air which makes the game quite fun. But then you get the second power (fire) which has very weird mechanics like spinning, going underground, going through walls. And before you can get comfortable with that the game gets really tedious. You're jumping platforms, switching between powers, fighting people on the way. The controls were the main issue for me. Also, it felt very very stressful having to switch between 2 power-packages mid-air. I'm not interested in waiting to unlock another 3-4 powers and stressfully having to manage between them. The game could be a LOT more fun if switching between powers was not time-sensitive. Just let me switch based on my own time. Don't push me when I'm jumping mid-air over thorns and hitting a bad guy to switch sayan modes (or whatever they're called).