I'm a little bit of everything all rolled into one.
I like a game that wears its inspirations on its sleeves. Lovish, a strange but charming 8-bit platformer, is wearing a NASCAR racing suit covered with the names of games from the ‘80s and ‘90s. You play as Sir Solomon, a blue knight who's out to rescue his beloved Princess Tsuna from the evil Devil Lord in a series of single-screen platforming stages of increasing difficulty. The gameplay is simple but very quickly, the challenge is real. I really enjoyed the game, despite a few minor complaints.
Each stage in the Devil Lord’s castle is a single-screen platforming challenge in which you guide Sir Solomon along through a maze filled with enemies, spikes, switches, and keys to unlock the door to the next stage. Things start simple enough–Solomon can jump and swing his sword–but you’ll soon be dashing, shooting lightning bolts, and performing downward and upwards strikes along the way. Solomon can collect coins to buy new abilities, minigames, and other surprises in a couple shops. The primary targets, though, are Crowns. Each stage has three Crowns, although you have to discover the ability to collect two of them. One Crown is hidden somewhere in the stage which often requires you to break a block or perform a specific action. Peace Crowns are won by completing a stage without attacking any enemies, and Time Crowns are won by completing the stage quickly.
You’ll eventually seek out Dark Moons, which are very rare and involve traveling to the Lovish version of Super Meat Boy’s Dark World. Collected crowns go towards unlocking bonus areas with fun prizes. You’ll die by taking one hit (for awhile, anyway) but you start the game with over 200 lives, so unless you’re clinically bad at platforming games, you’ll never be in trouble, and you'll find restocks here and there. The boss fights are generally simple affairs, with simple patterns to watch for.
The main gimmick of Lovish is that after each stage, a random encounter occurs in a short cinematic. Sometimes you’ll step in poop or get a call from your dad. Other times, you’ll find a treasure chest or partake in a very short RPG-style battle. Still other times, you’ll meet a new friend who will appear in Solomon’s friend list (once he buys a phone). These are usually mildly funny…until they start repeating. And with over 50 stages to complete, often multiple times if you’re going for Crowns, you’ll see many of these interstitials many, many times. You’ll eventually be able to skip them by holding Y, and once that option became available, I did it every time.
The game looks like a long-lost NES game and sounds similar, though I didn’t find the music as catchy as I’d have hoped. There’s a menu option to give the game a softer look, imitating a CRT display, which I found charming.
The thing I really enjoyed about Lovish is that it’s just very surprising. Many of the cinematics are clever, there’s a set of late-game bosses and stages and directly reference many NES games from my childhood including Super Mario Bros. 3 and Bubble Bobble, among others, and you’ll occasionally find yourself playing a shockingly long minigame based directly on some old favorites. The cinematics might get old, and some of the Crowns are weirdly hard to find, but overall, I think this Lovish is a fun romp.
