Video: https://youtu.be/iI_glAdYXCA

Pretty fun time. The only negative I have is that it's a bit unclear as to which areas you ought to be going to first in order to unlock doors and such. This leads to a minor bit of frustration as it feels like unnecessary travel back and forth to different spots just to find out you should have gone a different path first.

It doesn't take long to travel through the temple you're in, but it's still frustrating. Outside of that it's a really charming platformer/metroidvania with nice pixel art and catchy tunes. You can probably finish it in under an hour if you make all the right choices.

The original game felt too short even for a microvania, so much so that it left me unsatisfied and I left it a negative rec.

With everything that's been added in this version; the extra bosses and rooms, this game now feels far more complete. ..so much so that I can easily rank in as one of the most enjoyable microvanias (0-3.5 hour runtime) on Steam.

If you like this one, also worth checking out are: 100 Pumpkins 2, SJ-19 Learns to Love, Plague of Yamorn, Kalinur, Omnigon.

Hello everyone!

A video review of Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake is available, which you can watch by following this link: https://youtu.be/QG_d19RhLbc

For those who do not wish to watch the video:

Playtime: 2 hours and 20 minutes

Completion: 99% (I'm missing one Life Fruit)

Pros:

- Nostalgic pixel-art presentation and wholesome music that pays tribute to the classic platformers of the 90s with incredible effectiveness!

- While the map is compact, it quite a few secret places to discover for its size, which you do need to seek out if you wish to get stronger and eventually see the game’s true ending. More specifically, when it comes to the game’s exploration, the collectibles you’ll get to acquire are divided into Life Fruits, Equipment Pieces, Keys and Mysterious Crystals! Life Fruits, once obtained, raise your health by one heart, making it harder for you to die. Equipment Pieces provide the various different traversal abilities you need to fully explore the dungeon, such as the skill to push heavy crates, throw daggers or bounce off of enemies by jumping on them, Super Mario style. Keys are necessary to unlock the numerous locked doors you will come across. Finally, Mysterious Crystals are necessary in order for you to get the true ending of the story, and are definitely the trickiest collectible to obtain since not only are they located at the other end of quite challenging platforming segments, but finding said segments requires keen observation. When it comes to the aforementioned collectibles, they do get automatically marked on the map overview, along with other points of interest, which is great

- Platforming-wise, I very much enjoyed the acrobatic challenges I came across here, whose difficulty had a nice gradual increase the deeper you ventured into the dungeon, starting with some basic platforming sections before slowly introducing a variety of different obstacles, and culminating in the aforementioned Mysterious Crystal gauntlets, which were very fun and mildly stressful to get through, though never felt unfair. Platforming was definitely a highlight for me, and was complemented by fantastically crisp controls and solid hit-boxes that allowed for various close calls when it came to the numerous traps and pitfalls present.

- When it comes to combat, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake is simple, fun and true to its retro mentality. There are a total of two different ways in which you can take down enemies, those being the throwing dagger and the spiked soles. The throwing dagger, as the name suggests, allows you to throw a blade at your enemies, which takes most of them down in one hit and can also be used to push platforms from a distance. The spiked soles pretty much turn you to Super Mario and allow you to jump on top of enemies and bounce off of them as you take them down, which is also the only way to kill the foes wearing helmets. These two modes of combat may sound simplistic and, I guess to a degree, they are, but they’re also incredibly satisfying and can lead to some awesome platforming instances.

- I cannot begin to express how much I loved the bosses I got to fight in Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake! Each and every one of them felt like a blast from the past, featuring completely different attack patterns and movement mentality and feeling just right in terms of difficulty. I once again need to complement the game’s crisp controls here, which made each bout against its big bads a fun romp where defeat never felt cheap and victory relied on pattern recognition, even when it came to certain bosses that may have seemed brutal at first. This, along with platforming, were my two favorite aspects of the game.

- Good price-to-length ratio, in my opinion.

Cons:

- My only gripe is in relation to the map overview, which doesn’t show you your exact position on it, but rather pinpoints the overall room you’re currently in. In all honesty, the map is very easy to traverse and I highly doubt this will be an issue for a lot of people, but I still feel it needs to be mentioned.

- If you're looking for a complex metroidvania, this is not it.

Overall, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake is a nice change of pace from the lengthier and, at times, sprawling metroidvanias that dominate the market. It is meant to be simple, compact, straightforward and fun, and it fully achieves these goals by offering an experience that is as entertaining as it is nostalgic. If you’re looking for a short and sweet metroidvania experience that doesn’t ask the world of you, Tiny Dangerous Dungeons Remake will definitely deliver!

Final Grade: 8/10