Accompanying the classic visuals, there is a chip-tune soundtrack that is full of energy and doesn’t feel super repetitive no matter how many times you will have to start over from the tower entrance. With retro-looking 8-bit sprites and a simplified palette, Astalon: Tears of the Earth feels like an authentic NES title. Some are to make your characters stronger, give the team extra HP or other non-permanent items. Dying can also be advantageous as you can purchase power-ups with the soul orbs you have collected.

This includes any bosses that you have defeated, so at least you are always making progress. So you will not have to constantly start from the very beginning. If you do die, any changes that have been made to the tower will still be there. So they are essentially stuck in a loop, that’s why this place feels so familiar to them. Once they do, Epimetheus gets the soul of Algus. The deal is until the team succeeds in their quest he will continuously bring them back to life. Unknown to Kyuli and Arias, Algus has made a deal with the death demon Epimetheus. If you do die, I should say when you die, you are taken back to the entrance of the tower where you first entered. It is full of hazards and enemies that will take you out. Not that you would expect a place with that name to be. The Tower of Serpents definitely is not a nice place to visit. As frustrating as it may get, this does give you a chance to collect more blue gems which are the in-game currency, and maybe spot some other secret areas you didn’t see before. This leads to a ton of backtracking in Astalon. If you have to scale up a wall and you aren’t Kyuli, who is the only character who can wall jump, you will have to head back to a campfire to switch who you are playing as. Later in the game, the ability to swap characters on the spot will become available to you, but this also means the levels and puzzles ramp up in difficulty.Ĭhoosing the right character for each obstacle you encounter becomes very important. The campfire also acts as a save point so you can save any progress and items you have gathered up to that point. At the beginning of Astalon, the only time you can switch between these three characters is by visiting a campfire. Algus can use his magic to go through walls to hit switches that open up other paths. Kyuli, being the smallest, is able to do wall jumps to scale up platforms and walls to areas that the other two can not reach. Arias can use his sword to slash through barriers that are blocking off different areas.

Each character controls differently and has their own unique abilities. You use three unique characters together Arias the warrior with a sword, Kyuli the rogue armed with a bow and arrow, and Algus the wizard. Astalon is actually a rogue-like Metroidvania title with some RPG elements incorporated. It may seem that this title is just an action-platformer like Castlevania and Metroid, but it’s not.

Watching the trailer for Astalon: Tears of the Earth really gave off the vibe of some of my favourite retro games. That is when they come across The Serpent Tower. They are on a quest to save their village and are looking for the source of the poison that is getting into the water supply. Very few people survived and they are now forced to live in radioactive deserts. The world’s kingdoms were greedy, battling each other on a quest for more power not caring about the destruction their actions were causing. Reviews // 28th Jul 2021 - 2 years ago // By Alana Dunitz Astalon: Tears of the Earth Review

Astalon tears of the earth characters