Have you ever imagined that hell had a form similar to the world you know … but everything was reversed? That is the outline of what Mad Gear Games , a Spanish developer that brings under the arm A Hole New World, proposes, a Run ‘n Gun of the old
school that pretends to delight the locals and strangers, appealing to nostalgia without skimping on quality. This is the letter of presentation of a game that takes us to Versee, an idyllic place that was rid of evil thanks to the action of its creator, a goddess who decided to separ
ate the light from the darkness by burying the latter in the depths, under the soils of good. The great effort that this entailed forced her to separate and enclose her power in several or
bs, preventing other individuals from taking advantage of her for questionable purposes. Of course, among the forces of evil it soon took a battle to reach supremacy, and there won the faction of Lord Baduk, the villain of our film and the being that ravages Ver
see sending demonic hordes through the subsoil.Potion Master , our protagonist, will face danger and will seek to gather the orbs of power to restore the peace and tranquility of his land.
Emulating the best.
The excuse for the action is raised, and now we must get down to work. A Hole New World launches us into adventure and lives up to its name
by allowing us to explore a new world through the various holes we will find on the stage, an element that is the most original hallmark and opens exploration options and alternatives to advance in the levels. In addit
ion, the world below Versee is completely inverted (hence its name: Reversee), so we will walk through the roof, fall up and jump down, complicating everything a little more if possible and making the precipices possibly the only thing that does not kill us. The
perspective and style of game, meanwhile, remind of arcade classics of the 8 and 16 bits, with precise and simple but very demanding control. Quoting clear a
nd famous references, we would be talking about a mixture of Ghouls’ n Ghosts and Castlevania, which also resembles a lot in aesthetics.
The independent market has grown so much in recent years that it is very difficult to present a truly original proposal, which forces a pull of quality and personality to open up and sound strong among the general public. We could say that the mirror in which to look for a game with the characteristics of A Hole New World would be the successful Shovel Knigh
t , although in the adventure of Yacht Club Games the platform element has more weight. When the bar is so high, you should focus your efforts on showing that your creation is also very well taken care of, and we can assure you that Mad Gear has worked on it.
A turn of the screw in the face of adversity.
Our character moves laterally through scenarios with a well-designed and progressively more convoluted design, always enriched by the double dimension of which we spoke earlier. The underground world is used in various ways, serving as a flight in situations of danger, as a simple alternative of advance, as a route to explore and discover objects or secrets and, o
f course, as an unavoidable extension of some maps, forcing us to cross the depths while we go up (or down, depending on what you look at) the blood to the head. If something is missing in this respect it is to incite the player to a more intelligent use of thi
s option at certain times, since most of the problems we will have to move forward will be the result of overly extensive maps, endless roads that will challenge our sense of direction.
The demanding path of the hero.
Of course, a game that appeals to maximum simplicity in its controls but claims skill, must be demanding in its difficulty. We would not say that we are facing one of the most complicated games we have encountered, but it is certainly a bone: notice
for navigators. Those who are more experienced in the genre will see the system of deaths and continuations as excessive help, since in the first case we appear exactly where we have lost the last heart and, in case of running out of lives, we will return to t
he last activated control point, having several distributed by each level. There is no limit of credits, so, in the worst case, completing the game m
ay be a matter of insistence, but the skill is definitely rewardedof not dying too much by having an alternative ending and by the points counter, which restarts after each continuation.
The precision in the control is our great ally, but it also helps to acquire new attack potions with each boss exceeded, an element that is very well implemented, allowing us to learn the use of each one at the next level: the design, The types of enemies an
d the situations that are presented to us are very well measured to understand when each type of attack is especially useful. This, of course, is not a guarantee that we will do well when the occasion arises, and that is that, as the game gets complicated, faster we will ha
ve to decide. It is a shame, however, that we have only five screens , since the duration remains fairly fair and the difficulty offers unevennessaccused at certain points by the abrupt passage from an intermediate level to one very close to the end. In any case, we c
ould highlight especially some very specific confrontation as peak demand, keeping a curve more appropriate as a general rule.
