Golden Force is a retraux-style platformer / Hack and Slash action game made by indie studio Storybird.
The titular Golden Force is a band of buccaneers, seeking treasure and adventure in the high seas. After surviving an unexpected assault from a Krakken, the Golden Force uncovers news of an awakening Demon King and his army threatening safety of the world. But more importantly, news of an entire vault of booty in the Demon King's vaults.
Adventure awaits ahead as the Golden Force sets sail on their trusty vessel, the Golden Boat. Players can choose between the four heroes:
- Gutz, a Master Swordsman and veteran adventurer who's The Hero.
- Spina, a Pirate Girl who kicks ass with her trusty twin cutlass.
- Drago, a Draconic Humanoid and Token Non-Human of the team, who serves as The Big Guy.
- Elder, an Old Master who had seen plenty of action in his youth.
All hands on deck, adventures in the high seas awaits the Golden Force!
- Airborne Mooks: Dragonflies, floating eyes, winged skeletons and flying ghoul heads are among the many aerial enemies who attacks from above.
- Air-Dashing: An ability possessed by all four playable heroes, allowing them to reach the nearest platform while in mid-jump.
- Animal Mecha: The second boss, General Nacho fights you on a pier while piloting a giant shark submarine.
- Assist Character: There are a minimum of two Golden Force members active in each adventure, and on single-player mode the AI controls the second member.
- Battle in the Rain: The very first boss, General Salsa the Krakken, is fought in a thunderstorm where Salsa will use his tentacles to restrain your ship while lashing away at you.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Giant dragonflies, grubs and worms are a recurring enemy type throughout the game.
- Boss Warning Siren: In the form of a thick, red bar with the words WARNING all in caps, heralding arrival of a boss.
- Bottomless Pits: Shows up frequently in the jungles, ruins, and dungeons. Although you can actually cling to the side of walls and jump your way back up, so you're less likely to lose a life compared to other platformers of it's type (unless you're too deep in the pit and unable to grab a surface in time, in which case you do lose a life).
- Checkpoint: In the form of decomposing corpses tied to poles. Passing one of them causes it's eyes to light up and glow red, and saves your progress.
- Descending Ceiling: An obstacle in the underground ruins, either in the form of spikes from a collapsing ceiling or the floors suddenly rising and trying to flatten you to the top of the screen. You'll need to run for the nearest exit, and onscreen mooks usually all suffer horrible (but impressive) deaths in the process.
- Double Weapon: General Tacos attacks you with a two-sided BFS, which he can fling like a Precision-Guided Boomerang to slice you from a distance.
- Edible Theme Naming: For reasons unexplained, the bosses are all named after Mexican food. The krakken is General Salsa, there's a mechanical shark called Nacho, General Burrito is a massive ape behemoth, while General Tortilla is a tree-demon and General Tacos is a gargoyle.
- Egg Folk: Andromorphic eggs are another enemy resembling a pair of glowing eyes inside a cracked eggshell, whose sole ability is a Rolling Attack.
- Elemental Powers: The "Boost" upgrade you can obtain in-between level for your weapons. For instance, Fire Boost turns your equipment into a Flaming Sword, Ice Boost freezes your enemies on contact, Thunder Boost allows you to Shock and Awe on mooks, and so on.
- Fish People: The strongest enemy in the underwater stages, who can fight both below and above the surface. Oddly enough this game's equivalent to fish-men seems to have plesiosauroid features on their faces.
- Floating in a Bubble: If you're on single-player and your AI partner is too far behind offscreen, they'll catch up with you by floating around in a bubble.
- Flying Face: One of the recurring enemy types - gigantic floating zombie heads who attacks by spitting grubs on you.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: General Burrito, in the last stage of his fight, flees sliding down a cliff upon having enough health depleted while dropping projectiles behind him. You need to follow him via Improvised Zipline and finish him off.
- Giant Mook: The spear-wielding ogres and flying skeleton enemies are several times larger than your playable heroes, and takes even more damage than common mooks.
- Go for the Eye: General Salsa's sole weak spot is his gigantic single eye (larger than your characters!), reachable by jumping on his tentacles and slashing from up close.
- Heart Container: The maxi Food power-up increases your Maximum life by a point and restores your health to the new level.
- Kraken and Leviathan: The first boss is a huge purple Krakken (inexplicably) named General Salsa.
- Maniac Monkeys: General Burrito is a giant ape monster who alternates between tying to Goomba Stomp you or fling projectile attacks.
- Money Spider: Bonuses and pickups are represented as coins of assorted sizes, which can be collected from slain enemies, including animal-based mooks like beetles and worms.
- Nothing but Skulls: The forest stage where you fight General Tortilla has an absorb amount of human skulls carpeting the forest floor. As well as entire mounts in the background. Plus the cross-section view reveals more skulls underground.
- Oculothorax: Gigantic floating stone eyes are an enemy in the ruins area, who can fire Eye Beams as an attack.
- Our Gargoyles Rock: General Tacos, the second-to-last boss before facing the Demon King, is a giant gargoyle monster.
- Painful Pointy Pufferfish: Besides piranhas, there are also pufferfishes in stages where you dive underwater, though they are Stationary Enemy-types who remains floating in a fixed spot, damaging you if you touch them by accident.
- Piranha Problem: Piranhas are the most recurring enemies in underwater levels. As you're slower when fighting underwater and far less mobile, it's more advisable to just swim to the nearest exit when these enemies shows up.
- Sand Worm: Another recurring insect-based enemy, who sticks their heads out of surfaces to attack. They're immobile due to being confined to a hole, but can spit poisonous green projectiles as a ranged attack. Oddly enough their heads looks more like grubs than worms.
- Shows Damage: All the bosses. General Salsa lose the skin around his face and exposes his skull, Nacho's shark submarine lose it's teeth and starts emitting smoke, Tortilla sheds it's tree body and fights you in ghost form, and so on.
- Skull for a Head: The lowest-level humanoid enemies have skulls in place of their craniums, despite the rest of their bodies being organic (they bleed after getting slashed, for starters).
- Sleepy Enemy: One of the underwater caverns contains sleeping aquatic monsters, but because of the water current you're very likely to bump into them, awakening the monsters into attacking.
- Springy Spores: The giant sunflowers functions as trampolines, which allows you to scale walls and reach higher areas. In most levels it's crucial that you them with your Double Jump ability to exit an area and progress.
- Stationary Enemy: As mentioned above, pufferfishes and sand worms doesn't move around and are confined to a fixed spot. There's also an underwater monster resembling a gigantic maw stuck to the floor, which chomps you if you're close enough, or spit bubbles if you're out of range.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: In underwater levels, you can remain below the surface for dozens of minutes and even kick ass while submerged. That said, your mobility is limited and the water current tends to have you floating around at random, giving you a disadvantage in battle.
- Tactical Suicide Boss:
- General Salsa's sole weak spot, his massive eye, would be unreachable if his tentacles aren't sticking out of the water for the entirety of the boss battle, allowing you to use them as platforms to hit back.
- General Tortilla will drop floating fruits from it's branches as an attack, combined with Vine Tentacles on the ground, and it's main weak point is the demon face on it's bark. How convenient then that you can jump on those fruits (Stepping Stones in the Sky-style to avoid his vines and attack his face).
- Temporary Platform: The ruins level contains collapsing platforms, who breaks away just when your character is standing upon them. You'll need to keep using the Air-Dashing ability or lose a life.
- Throne Room Throwdown: The Demon King is fought in his throne room in a boss battle lifted straight from the opening of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
- Treasure Is Bigger in Fiction: One of the rarer pickup you can obtain is a golden medal whose sprite is larger than your characters. How do you even manage to bring it back to your ship remains a mystery.
- The Trees Have Faces: There's a stage in a darkened forest where all it's trees, both in the background and foreground, have contorted faces in their barks. The largest of those trees notably has a sinister cackling face, and that turns out to be the stage's boss, General Tortilla.
- Tropical Island Adventure: The first stage is set on a tropical island filled with giant insects and enemy mooks.
- Tube Travel: Tubes are used as a quick access between areas, though they only works one-way.
- Waterfront Boss Battle: General Nacho's boss battle is set on a pier, where he will bring his shark-submarine to attack you. Once you damage the submarine enough, it submerges and you jump into the water to finish it off.
- When Trees Attack: General Tortilla is a demon inhabiting a giant tree, who can summon spiky Vine Tentacles and Bullet Seed as an attack.
