Guild of Darksteel

At first glance Guild of Darksteel can be mistaken as a typical side-scrolling action-adventure. Yet, it’s both and neither. What it is, is a pixel-based narrative adventure that’s been crossed with a rhythm-based game. If you think along the lines of Flashback and Guitar Hero then you’re not too far off track.

Coming in at a download size of 132MB in total, the developer has managed to pack a decent amount into a small package. Aside from the slightly frustrating repetitiveness in combat, Guild of Darksteel is a gaming experience I am happy to have had. I look forward to seeing what else this developer can create in the future.

The developer clearly is a fan of some classic experiences and knows how to take their spirit and bring it to the present. The challenge is to update the core mechanics interestingly and choose the right concepts for the world he is building. Guild of Darksteel is ultimately a shallow experience that does not offer much more than its demo but I am curious what Sandman can create in the future.

This is a game that gets a lot of things right—things that bigger teams often struggle with. At the same time, the game’s smaller scope results in a paucity of content/secrets and an overabundance of filler opponents who sabotage the pacing. I enjoyed my time with Guild of Darksteel, but it ultimately feels like a third of an incredible game let down by its limited scope.

Guild of Darksteel is a short, simple game that only takes a few hours to get through. There's nothing offensive or necessarily bad about it, but it's hard to recommend all the same.

This retro adventure is a bit of an oddity, on the one hand seemingly wanting to evoke a feeling of of the likes of the classics Prince of Persia and company but on the other trying to produce a more complex combat system to spice things up...