Gods (1991)

Gods is a very strange shooting/brawling platformer. It very much looks a bit similar to Turrican (It could be because it was also an Amiga game?) With lots of bright and richly colored characters and environments, and smooth animations as you attack everything. Every stage is basically some kind of odd Castlevania-esque switch-puzzle based level, with a number of doors, trapdoors, platforms, walls and other 'gates' that collapse as you make procedural progress until the end. There is also lots of treasure (and bonus treasure) to be had if you solve the puzzles perfectly right, where you can then spend your loot at the shop to upgrade yourself between levels. Feels like a weird take on action-platform games. Initially I was really intrigued by the formula here and was curious where it would go but after a while, I grew tired of it. It does have good music and looks nice, but I just didn't find the platform puzzle elements that engaging or interesting (getting stuck wasn't fun because solutions are random with switch puzzles, and was completely clueless what to even do, resulting in random backtracking with an all or nothing result)
The shooting element in the game is actually pretty cool and impressive. Dispatching enemies isn't too difficult as you get powerful pretty quickly. But stalwarty levels and clunky switch puzzles make it feel very much feels like a second-rate Turrican

Still, levels looked cool. I fought a boss (and won) and the shooting upgrade system while complicated and i didn't completely understand it was pretty neat. Even just a few levels in I had multiple simultaneous weapons. I was throwing out all sorts of weapons and subweapons by the time i gave this up shortly after the first boss. If only the puzzles were more sensible and logical or creative instead of just random, it might've been enough to get me to stick with it.

The game features the ability to pick up items such as keys until you can use them on their locks. Unfortunately, your inventory space is quite limited, making the game a bit more complex

IMO there are better games that are puzzle platformers out there, (and there are worse ones that are much harder) this is no Lost Vikings but it isn't really trying to be. I suspect that this game might appeal more to European design sensibilities of the era more (Impossible Mission) that lean towards complex puzzles.

Oh and if you do decide to check this out, i really recommend you don't be like me and play SNES version. a quick look reveals the Mega Drive/Genesis version to have both better resolution/detail, and i think the music sounds much more native. It seems that Bitmap Brothers made the original games for the Amiga.... So, just throwing that out there for anyone looking to explore the platform. [it's indeed a fantastic sounding game on ALL platforms

(I would link to the Amiga title music but it seems I can't do that on grouvee anymore. Look it up!)

I might revisit this if i seek to become an Amiga Lord (Lord British?) someday, but for now i'm okay with my console mortality.

Beat. This game reminded of me of King Arthur's world even though the genre is completely different. The game was very difficult at first until I learned the controls. Some of the puzzles were interesting, though I had to lookup a walkthrough a couple of times. Main time was to figure out how to use the special gems; it was as simple as only having 1 in the inventory at a time. I could not figure out how to fill the 4th inventory slot so I assume it could not be used. The inventory system was a bit awkward anyway, as were the overall controls and movement. Probably the most annoying thing was holding the jump button did repeated jumps, so I often accidentally jumped right after a jump. The combat was good, very much like a shoot em up only the character moves like a stone golem. There are 3 different weapon slots. Fireballs have their own slot though I am not sure if there is an upgrade. The main slot goes knife, shuriken, mace, spear, axe. The last slot fires low and goes axe, bomb, hunter seeker. I hated the bomb because it does friendly damage. The seekers were awesome and I often used them to kill enemies from a safe position. The enemies often spawned out of nowhere, giving very little time to react. I often got hit and had to load a save state to try again knowing exactly what will happen; this was not an easy game but dying was not a big deal. Sometimes I felt I had to take the occasional hit or death. The shop after each boss was good for healing and upgrading weapons, and gives considerable player choice. The bosses were difficult but had fixed patterns to learn. I needed the walkthrough for the final boss because of the damn worm that moves quickly all over the place and 1 hit kills on touch. I know I missed secrets but ended with a lot of money and lives. I liked this game though it is far from the best.

6.8/10