Savage Halloween tells the story of James, a farmer who had his eternal rest interrupted, because of the yearly Halloween rave where monsters party for 24h non-stop. But this year is different as no one came home because an evil vampire used a spell to block the passage back to the afterlife as he wants the party to never end. James, with his trusty shotgun, decides to end this madness and set off to end the riot.

Savage Halloween is a 2D run and gun game akin to the classic Contra/Probotector where you’re goal is to kill everything in your path and reach the end level boss. As with most games of the genre, Savage Halloween also features power-up items that will help you throughout this ghoulish adventure. The main difference is that you can accumulate ammo for any special weapon and switch between them with a simple button press. There’s a spread gun, exploding chickens, bouncing frogs, and boomerang ghosts. You can also pick up grenades in a limited quantity. Players can also shoot in 8 directions.

Each level is a horror-like theme such as spooky castles, a forest, and the obligatory snow level. There’s also a decent enemy variety and levels are fairly balanced. While not as challenging as Konami’s famed series, each stage is filled with enemies and deadly traps. Thankfully, your character has a health bar and can be refilled by finding hearts peppered through each level giving players a fighting chance. There are also three players characters; the Pumpkin Headed James, a werewolf named Lulu, and a woman named Dominika. Each character has its own strength and weaknesses. While James is overall perfectly balanced, the werewolf will be able to take slightly more damage, but move slower while Dominika will be slightly quicker, but won’t be able to endure too much damage.

While the levels are a perfect mix of action and challenge, the whole thing goes sideways when it comes to bosses. They go beyond challenging as they walk the thin line between frustrating and hard. Thankfully the game is old school in the ways of lives whereas if you die and have remaining lives, you can continue the battle; meaning some boss fights might require you to lose all your lives unless you’ve mastered their sometimes near impossible patterns.

Savage Halloween looks great with its 16-bit pixelated visuals dark-ish, albeit sometimes colorful, spooky environments. The game features a decent enemy variety. Each level is also uniquely designed with its own theme ensuring a new challenge every time you start up a new level. The soundtrack is also appropriately chiptune to match the game’s visuals. While an interesting one, it’s not as iconic as other classic games of the same genre such as Contra.

Fans of old-school run n’ gun games and nail bitting challenges should definitely look into Savage Halloween. This little gem feels like it came out of left field. Levels are fun, challenging, and overall properly fairly balanced for a fun experience; while bosses do crank up the difficulty up to eleven, it’s extremely rewarding to overcome them. While 7 levels might be on the short side of things, I feel it’s the perfect length as you’ll die often. And the three playable characters also offer a decent amount of replay value. Definitely worth checking out.

Overall
  • 85%
    CX Score - 85%
85%

Summary

Pros

  • Classic run ‘n gun experience
  • Three playable characters
  • Great level design
  • Unique weapon variety

Cons

  • Boss battles difficulty ramps things up

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