Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials bills itself as a “snarky action-adventure puzzle game,” which is an incredibly accurate description of what you can expect. In it, you wander around from room to room, beating up Enemies and throwing fruit so that your glowing bat companion can activate switches on your behalf. Timing plays a big role in the gameplay, so this isn’t a game for those prone to “noping” out once a game asks them to hit a switch and quickly dart across platforms before it disappears. In many ways, I respect the hell out of Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials for being so unapologetic about what it is.
For one thing, the humor proves to be a great counterbalance to the gameplay. The tight timing windows and occasionally opaque mechanics (I don’t recall ever being told that I could knock certain enemies down with rocks, so that being required at one point threw me for a loop) can cause Batbarian to be incredibly frustrating at points, so meeting a new character and responding to them with non sequiturs is cathartic.
Batbarian‘s early gameplay is really good. Some of the timing is tricky, yes, but it rarely comes across as unfair. You level up as you defeat enemies throughout the world and select your level-up bonuses through a slot machine minigame, with the upgrades being to your awareness (which impacts your ability to see in Batbarian‘s incredibly dark caves), strength, and defense. Basically, the gameplay feels like a metroidvania-RPG combo that went through a midlife crisis and decided to try its hand at being a puzzle-platformer.
However, there are some minor irritations that are immediately apparent and may become more fatal later on. While the fruit you use to direct your bat companion is unlimited, your rocks and other types of fruit are consumable, so puzzles and enemies that require using them can see you wiping out your entire stock. And that’s assuming that you don’t miss—some puzzles simply can’t be completed if you run out of the required item, and the tricky trajectories required of many throws make it easy to toss items into pits.
The same problem applies to companion abilities, which are nonsensically limited to 2-3 uses before you have to recharge them by defeating a bunch of enemies. Enemies only appear to respawn once you move two screens away from them, though, so you can find yourself without backtracking several screens to grind on mobs and replenish a companion’s ability so that you have another shot at finishing a mandatory puzzle with it. I could see this becoming a big problem later on in Batbarian as the puzzles get harder.
But Batbarian‘s biggest liability right now is its momentum, which makes no sense. After getting an early-game upgrade to your movement speed, your run starts slow but ramps up to full speed in half of a second. You don’t gain momentum during your jump, either, so jumping from a tiny square can result in a pitifully short hop onto a bunch of spikes just as easily as it can launch you at full speed. Avoiding enemies and other hazards is incredibly difficult because of this momentum, and I keep finding myself running headlong into my opponents like an idiot because the timing is so unlike anything else I’ve played.
Still, there are a lot of things to like about Batbarian. Its humor is great, the pacing has been fantastic thus far, and I appreciate the synth-driven soundtrack after years and years of experience with developers assuming that they can get away with cacophonous echoes as a backing track for underground areas. The momentum just has a way of killing the fun of an area, with the combination of unpredictable movement mechanics and levels that are mostly shrouded in darkness leading to some less-than-ideal stretches.
Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials impressions first appeared on Killa Penguin
