Whilst retro arcade platformers have become some of my favourite releases in the last couple of years, often they have smoothed out some of the retro jagged edges that we forget about. Axe & Bow Land refuses to wear the rose-tinted glasses. It is difficult, cumbersome, and uncompromising. For some gamers, this will be music to their ears. For me, I wanted a little bit of mercy and forgiveness!
The player takes charge of two main protagonists. Axel, who ascends vertical climbing levels with his arc-throwing axes, can take levels at his own pace. Bowie’s levels have a vertical scroll to them as they move between platforming and hovering on a cloud, nodding more towards an 8-direction shoot ’em up occasionally. Whenever either character hits an enemy with their attack, the enemy doesn’t die, but it freezes in place. This introduces the huge puzzle-platforming concept for Axe & Bow Land. Most of the platforms are spaced out in a way that requires you to freeze enemies in place and use them as stepping stones to get from A to B. Once stepped on, the enemies will hold still until you step off them again, and they’ll fall like statues. This is often how you damage bosses, but otherwise, the enemies will respawn for you to freeze again and traverse across stages.
As a concept, I love it. The way wastes no time in introducing mini-puzzles that require you to freeze enemies mid-air and have other enemies walk over the frozen ones to reach platforms they otherwise couldn’t, so you can freeze them there instead. In fact, that puzzle mechanic reappears constantly throughout the game, be it with birds, monkeys, bees, snakes, spiders, or crocodiles. It is just that the 80’s vibe of the game carries across into the movement, speed, and hit detection. Your characters move slowly, and enemies love to throw objects at you from all kinds of angles. The only way to avoid them is to jump or fall, and these are so painfully slow to watch that it slows the game to a crawl.
Levels are designed to keep you doing a weird dance of two steps forward, one step back, because of how enemies are laid out and how they attack collectively. At least there isn’t a time limit. There is a life limit, though, and that’s why I recommend playing Arcade mode before Story mode. In Arcade mode, you’ll be able to collect marbles, and the player gains an extra life for every 100 collected. There are also hidden letters to find and power-ups that improve your movement speed and increase the number of weapons thrown per move. Both these power-ups make the game far more enjoyable to play, especially the speed one. It makes the game feel more alive and less sluggish. They don’t solve Bowie’s hit detection when he is on a cloud, though, which is larger than the character sprite.
I feel like I’ve been spoiled by 80’s arcade throwbacks that deliver 2020’s modern quality of life improvements. Axe & Bow Land has none of those, and it isn’t interested in them. Whilst the sluggish, deliberate nature put me off the game, I can completely understand why others would enjoy it. This is a challenge that some retro gamers will relish digging into because it is a purist interpretation of 80’s classic platformers. Just expect it to be rough around the edges and completely unforgiving. Good luck!
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