The Re-Materializing Hero.
Hargrave is a 2D Action and Platform Game developed and published by Disafter Games. It was released as a free-to-play game for Steam on October 12, 2020. It follows the exploits of Hargrave, a space adventurer whose ship is on the verge of running out of energy. There's only place nearby that has any power cells: Sector X1037, a sprawling labyrinth of mechanized death traps. You'll need all the platforming skills you can muster to get Hargrave back into space... and keep him alive long enough to get there.
Hargrave provides examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: You get unlimited retries, and you're only transported to the entrance of a room when you die. Also, you can warp back to the central Hub whenever you want, which eliminates a lot of backtracking and allows you to tackle progression at your own pace.
- Boring, but Practical: Unless you're going for the bonus sectors or want to level up the other weapons, chances are you'll get the Predator homing missiles and never look back. They're powerful enough to take out anything at a distance if given enough time.
- Captain Space, Defender of Earth!: Parodied. After beating the final boss, Hargrave tries to boast he's an invincible space hero... only for Duke to immediately point out that dying and re-materializing over and over is not the same as being invincible. Hargrave tries to ignore him.
- Collect-a-Thon Platformer: You need to collect enough energy cells to unlock access to bosses and their weapons, as well as the final section of the game. There are 69 cells in all, but you only need 60 to beat the game. You do need all of them to unlock the Grave Sectors, which don't have any cells, but are bonus platform levels for dedicated players.
- Death Course: Every single room is one of these. The entire point of the game is to carefully avoid every death trap in a room, collect the power cell hidden behind them, and exit the room without getting killed. If you get killed after collecting a power cell, Hargrave will regenerate where he started, but without the power cell.
- Death Is Cheap: Given what you're up against, you're probably going to die hundreds, if not thousands of times. While this sends you back to the beginning of the room and resets its power cell, you can retry as many times as you want without any serious drawbacks.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: Downplayed. Hargrave can fire diagonally, but the angle is so negligible that it barely makes a difference. It also becomes a moot point once you unlock the homing missiles, which can carry you throughout the game.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Small killer robots, giant killer robots, automated turrets and flamethrowers, energy orbs, laser grids, vanishing platforms, industrial mashers, slippery floors, spikes on almost every surface... Let's just say that safe areas are few and far between. This is taken up to eleven in the Grave Sectors, which require perfect platforming just to stay alive.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Hargave can be impaled, blasted, exploded, roasted, crushed, or vaporized. He'll just re-materialize at the entrance to the room and try again.
- Grenade Spam: The fully-upgraded Karen Family Reunion EX launches a dozen grenades in every direction at a rapid pace, making it ideal for larger enemies.
- Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: The biggest challenge you'll have is navigating through fields of spikes and lasers without getting hit. Meanwhile, you can get hit by the bosses a couple of times, and dying merely restarts the battle. The bosses have easy attack patterns, and don't stand a chance against fully-upgraded weapons.
- Harder Than Hard: The Grave Sectors, which are bonus levels reserved for players who have collected all the energy cells. Highlights include surfaces that alternate between mashers and sliding tables, claustrophobic hallways with floating barriers, vanishing platforms, and lined with spikes or lasers on nearly every surface, long conveyor belts lined with a couple dozen lasers, a gauntlet of energy orbs and flamethrower floors, and a cavern brimming with so many spikes that you'll have to master block creation and rapid wall dashing. Let's just say you're going to die a lot.
- Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: They're found in several rooms throughout the game, often positioned just perfectly to slow your momentum or feed you to a masher.
- Jump Physics: Hargrave basically operates as a blend of Mega Man (Classic) and Mega Man X. He has the default speed and limited ability to change direction mid-jump like the original Mega Man, but has the wall climbing and dashing of Mega Man X. This is made even more complicated with the ability to do shorter jumps and even tiny hops. While you can get through the game perfectly fine with just rudimentary platforming skills, the Grave Sectors require mastery of the mechanics.
- Mercy Invincibility: It only lasts for a second when you're hit by a projectile, and it won't save you in later areas.
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Nintendo Hard: Hargrave uses the hardest parts of the Mega Man series - the instant death obstacles and strict platforming - and takes them to borderline absurd levels. For example, one room has you navigate a series of horizontal and vertical laser hallways in which the floors, ceilings, and walls are all lasers. Instead, you have to dash and wall kick your way across the pixels of blocks directly in front of and behind where the lasers emanate from. - Not Completely Useless: A few examples:
- The Severus is basically a tiny energy whip with pathetically small range. It is by far the worst weapon in the game. However, it's excellent for quickly breaking the obstacle boxes in the second phase of the final boss fight.
- Similarly, the Dr. Seven fires off a spread of weak projectiles. It's functional enough, but you're never faced with large enough crowds to ever need it. In the final battle, however, it's upgraded with ability to continuously fire in all directions at once. Since the game registers every hit individually, you can fly into the final boss's head and inflict a Death of a Thousand Cuts in barely a few seconds.
- Lastly, the Pandora operates as a timed box of homing missiles. It's slower and more tedious to use than the regular homing missiles, so there's no point in using them... Right up until you get to the Grave Sectors and realize the boxes can be used as makeshift platforms across spike fields, block mashers from activating, and their missiles can temporarily stop automated turrets.
- No-Damage Run: Since Hargrave is a One-Hit-Point Wonder and the room resets when he dies, each room basically boils down down to this. You can die as many times as necessary, but it needs to be done perfectly for it to matter.
- Platform Hell: In order to beat the game, you have to navigate through multiple death courses perfectly, nab the power cell at the end, and work your way back out. Hargrave is a One-Hit-Point Wonder; dying causes him to re-materialize at the start of the room, losing the power cell in the process. Challenge rooms and Grave Sectors require a ton of Trial-and-Error Gameplay, precision platforming, and mechanic mastery, to the point that dying hundreds or even thousands of times wouldn't be unheard of.
- Rocket Punch: The Haymaker EX functions as one, though it's not as strong as the Sawyer Mill EX shuriken, which basically does the same thing.
- Spikes of Doom: A common staple of several rooms. This is taken up to eleven in the Grave Sectors, which have spikes on the floors, ceilings, and edges of the platforms.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Given the sheer amount of spikes, mashers, and lasers that can kill you instantly, you will die at least once within the first few rooms. The trick is learning what the hazards look like, how they function, how to dodge them, the precise lengths and timings of your jumps and dashes, etc. Several of the later rooms are also too big to be seen on one screen, so you'll have to learn multiple death courses that come in sections.
Just jump over it, man.
