Savage Halloween

Developer & Publisher: 2ndBoss Release: October 26, 2020 Playtime as of writing: 3.8 hours Code provided

Every year for Halloween, monsters come to our world to party but this year they decided that the party shouldn’t end and closed the portal home. It’s up to James the Pumpkin, LuLu the Werewolf, and Dominika the Vampire to put an end to this nonsense, defeat Dominika’s father, and reopen the portal home… because they are tired and want to go home and Dominika wants to watch TV.

Savage Halloween is an 8bit 2d platform shooter. You have your standard shot with unlimited bullets that just goes straight but can pick up other types of ammo for more situational enemies. You have a bat that is a shotgun spread, a ghost which just kind of boomerangs around you, a frog that slides on the ground, and a chicken that sticks to things and explodes. You can shoot in 8 directions and hold a button down to keep from walking if you’re aimed diagonal. Each character also has a special attack.

There are 7 scenarios with 6 levels each with the last level being the boss fight. 5 scenarios have mini-bosses with them usually being right before the boss fight. 2 scenarios have shmup sections that seem to go on way to long. The bosses have about three attacks they cycle through in the same order in the whole fight. They usually don’t change it up with the only exception I can think of being the first boss will use one of two attacks depending on how close or far you are from it. They don’t change pattern if you get their health low enough and they don’t have any other phases.

As of writing this I have gotten to the final boss but not have beaten them. Honestly I doubt I’m missing anything by not beating them game. Best case scenario I get a you are winner screen, worst case scenario it pulls a Ghost N’ Goblins. Howlongtobeat.com says the game takes an average of 4.5 hours to beat so I doubt it would pull the “it was all a dream” and make me play it again.

They do try to stretch out your play time by having achievements tied to beating the game as each of the characters so if you want to 100% it you need a minimum of 3 playthroughs, unless you can just go straight to the last level as your chosen character and get the achievement after beating the final boss again. Then you’d only need 2 playthroughs for the difficulty settings.

The soundtrack is great, it’s like midi techno which I guess makes sense with the final boss being a DJ and all. Normally I don’t buy game sound tracks, and I’m not going to start now, but if I did I would buy this one. Though I probably wouldn’t listen to it because the only game sound track I listen to is Cyberpunk 2077 (and by that I mean I just listen to “I really want to stay at your house” on repeat and cry (iykyk))

There is also a 2 player mode in which both players are on screen at the same time, but I don’t play multiplayer so I really can’t comment on it further then acknowledging that it exists. It uses local co-op and remote play together.

Overall I would say the game is okay. If you are into old school NES games then Savage Halloween is what you get if you make an NES game for the SNES. The look and feel of the game is NES but the controls are just slightly more complex requiring a few more buttons.

Anthony

Anthony spends most of his time thinking about games. When not playing games, writing about games, or thinking about games he can be found hunting pokemon in the wilds of downtown Clermont.If you like the words I write, maybe consider supporting me on Patreon?