Astebros

Genre: Action Developer: Neofid Studios Publisher: Neofid Studios Players: 1-2 Released: 2023

Over the summer, I had a blast playing Demons of Asteborg. I really liked its action/platforming focus, its great bosses, and terrific presentation. I was excited to see that the next game in the series, Astebros, was under development, and while I would have been content with more of the same, Neofid decided instead to go in an entirely different direction, swapping out the platforming for roguelike exploration added to the classic 16-bit side-scrolling action. I was apprehensive at first about such a drastic change, but after playing the game through to completion, I can say that Neofid absolutely made the right choice.

Astebros is the prequel to Demons of Asteborg, set a few centuries earlier. The story takes place during the founding days of the Kingdom of Asteborg and follows three heroes: the Knight, the Mage, and the Ranger, who are sent by their king to rescue an earlier group of explorers captured on a newly-discovered continent. With their mysterious guide Rorick, the trio travels through different environments to recover orbs and unlock the path to the final keep.

Each of the three characters has unique abilities that appeal to different play styles. The Knight is strong in melee combat and defense, the Mage uses powerful-but-limited spells, and the Ranger excels in ranged attacks and has animal companions. Throughout the game, you can find both temporary and permanent power-ups to make them stronger. The enhancements affect all three characters, and there are raw materials that you can find to craft new equipment. Moreover, a second player can join in simultaneous cooperative mode, taking advantage of all the power-ups and materials found. Since Astebros follows a roguelike structure, death means losing some items. The permanent upgrades you obtain by collecting orbs and your overall game progress stay with you, but you’ll lose money and other materials when goblins raid your corpse!

The seven areas that compose the world of Astebros are varied, featuring seven main locations like haunted mansions and flying castles, even an excursion inside of a sick giant. Each area has its own enemies, boss designs, and environmental styles, enhanced by detailed and colorful pixel art and some lovely backgrounds with parallax scrolling. The soundtrack, created by several composers, including Jacob Altman and SavagedRegime, ranges from ominous tracks in dark areas to playful yet sinister circus themes, and you’re going to find yourself adding more than a few to your Genesis playlist. Astebros combines beautiful presentation with some well-oiled gameplay, making this one title that’s going to turn some heads when you turn it on for your friends the first time.

All of the dungeons have 15 to 16 rooms with various challenges, including hidden walls, traps, and special rooms like fairies that can restore some of your health, treasure stores, and… taverns, for some reason. I don’t know why the taverns are there, really. All they do is offer you mushroom soup that intoxicates you. Eating it creates this cool-looking wave effect in the graphics, but that’s about all. Aside from that, there are also cells that house NPCs that you will definitely want to find and release because they will join your camp and offer services like weapons forging, fortune telling (very important for buying vows to ensure special rooms appear), and an item shop. A boss awaits at the end of the dungeon, and I have to give Neofid props for creating some original and challenging battles. A lot of the bosses aren’t easily understood at first and require some patience so that you can learn their weak points and how to exploit them. Astebros is pretty cryptic in this area, so, much like the 16-bit games of yore, you’ll have to take some time and stay alive long enough to learn their patterns.

Ok, I’ve used the term “roguelike” twice already, and it’s one that gets tossed around a lot nowadays. For those who are not clear about what I mean, games in this vein use procedurally-generated levels, which basically means that, among other things, their layouts change every time you enter them. These types of games aren’t new on the Genesis, as Fatal Labyrinth first used the style way back in 1990. Astebros’s levels aren’t large, and while they do change location with each attempt, they remain the same in composition, so you should have no trouble recognizing them when you return – and return you will! Astebros’s seven stages have two orbs each, requiring return trips to get the required amount to enter the keep. For this reason, I didn’t find the changes so drastic when I re-entered any given stage. If you do find any one area too hard, Neofid has added a two-player mode. One criticism I’ve heard of Demons of Asteborg is that it was only single player. The cooperative play in Astebros is a significant addition. A second player can join at any time, and when one player dies, they become a ghost until the boss is defeated, creating tense survival scenarios.

And I’m glad I brought up the level structure again, because many roguelikes tend to ramp up the difficulty to compensate for the lack of constant, extensive levels. Astebros avoids this design pothole by letting players know the difficulty level of each area beforehand on the main map. This way, you can grind a bit to make your team stronger, or you can jump into harder areas first to find some cool loot (assuming you survive). Moreover, compared to its predecessor, combat in Astebros feels more balanced. Enemies are less of a grind, and failure usually happens due to player errors rather than inflated health bars. The game rewards exploration, offering goodies like hidden bonuses and weapon blueprints, and having to replay each area is never a chore thanks to the room randomization and the fact that there are different bosses for each time!

A word about the randomness: Astebros’s randomness might be a challenge for completionists pursuing all bestiary entries or hidden scores though, as certain enemies and items may appear infrequently. There’s a special ending for gamers persistent enough to achieve 100 percent completion, so anyone trying for that goal is going to go through each area several times. Your mileage may vary regarding how appealing that much grinding will be.

Another possible issue that might frustrate players is just how cryptic certain aspects of the game are. For example, the sacrifice room only appears if you’ve spoken to the fortune teller and picked a vow. Which vow activates which room? You’ll have to experiment to find out. Also, it’s not explicit that the weapons you find plans for and have forged are not bought but rather found at the beginning of each area. It’s not hard to figure out, but it’s not guaranteed that the weapon will automatically appear. Moreover, when you have them forged, you have no idea if they’re better than your current weapon, as they’re locked and show no stats. More than a few times, I spent valuable materials unlocking weapons that ended up being weaker than what I was already using.

So, it’s not perfect. In the end though, Astebros is both a great prequel and a phenomenal side-scrolling action game. While not every feature originally planned during its Kickstarter campaign made it due to hardware limits, the game still delivers remarkable depth, accessibility, and polish. The physical release brings a full-color manual, beveled cartridge, collectible post card, and stickers – all in a quality, solid plastic clamshell case.

Neofid started out strong on the Genesis with Demons of Asteborg, and Astebros manages to one-up that excellent debut. It excels as a challenging yet fair roguelike, a visually and musically rich retro experience, and a cooperative action title with a ton of replay value. It’s a must-play for fans of the first game and a for Genesis owners in general.