DeVuego

Narita Boy is a feat of imagination, one of the most conceptually interesting games I’ve ever played. The retro world of the Digital Kingdom – its pixelart, design and art direction – are some of the most eye-catchingly beautiful ever committed to code. Its soundtrack is mesmerising, truly special synthwave. Narita Boy ends up more than the sum of its parts, going beyond the source code to deliver a game that should take its place alongside the greatest indies.

HyperParasite is an enjoyable twin-stick shooter with loads of character, sorry, characters. It’s humorous and fun. But it’s also painfully unforgiving. I think I would have really enjoyed it more, and even kept the difficulty, had they included some way to start from world 2, or world 3 once you’d earned them. Some kind of hub area. Forcing me to single run a game that also demands you earn characters as you go, makes for a lot of do-overs that are more to do with the system than player skill. This ultimately starts to put you off more than encourage further attempts.