Night Ranger Review

Night Ranger tells the story of Elara, an elite elven archer and master of the bow and magic arrow who must defend the ancient elven home. The heart of the forest and its ancient magical essence are being drained by a sudden and sinister invasion called the Shadow Blight.

Night Ranger is a 2D action platformer where players, as Elara, will need to fight the forces of evil across 30 different levels. Thankfully our little hero is equipped with his trusty and reliable bow to kill enemies. Enemies will come at you in different shapes and sizes.

While your bow does reasonable damage by default, as you kill enemies, you’ll be able to pick up colored orb which will act as power-ups for your bow; you’ll be able to find explosive rounds, faster arrows, double arrows or piercing arrows. All pretty self explanatory, while the piercing arrows simply shoots through the enemy and helpful when enemies are lined up.

There power up expires when the level ends. Speaking of which, in order to complete levels, unlike most 2D platformers where you have to reach the end, you need to kill every enemy in the area. When you start a level, you have your 3 hearts to give you a chance at survival, but get it by a spike and it’s instant death.

The game looks fine; nothing inherently wrong with the visual. But considering you’re fight in a forest, don’t expect much variety in terms of environments. Same design, color palette across all 30 levels. However, the enemy variety does change slightly as you progress through. The soundtrack is a generic stock score that’s highly forgettable.

While extremely simplistic, there are a few issues and/or questionable decisions. The lack of boss fights is one; not even at the end of the game. There’s not even an ending; once you complete level 30, the game just makes you restart it for some reason.

Night Ranger is a fun, albeit very simplistic game. It’s straight forward the lack of proper challenge makes this could be a great first game for the younger players in your family. But for those Achievement hunters, this is an easy 2000Gs. You get what you pay for; it can be a nice palette cleaners between bigger budget experiences.