Prison City

Prison City is an incredible game that captures the look of a classic NES platformer while adding more advanced controls, movement and combat mechanics. The gameplay feels fast, smooth and responsive and there are plenty of useful power ups in each stage. The enemy placement, bosses and nonstop pace make it seriously challenging, and some of the achievements are ridiculous. There is no way I can complete even one stage without taking damage!!! I had better luck with the car smashing mini game. Overall Prison City is a fantastic game, and one I'd highly recommend!

I found it a little too hard, and the level art a little too unreadable at times, but it's a hits-the-mark-for-real nes tribute artistically and i'll be playing it more, soon.

Great retro action-platformer with a heavy influence from Power Blade and other NES classics. This game goes beyond merely feeling inspired by the classics though, and feels more like a long-lost NES title that finally saw the light of day 3 decades later, albeit with modern QoL improvements. It truly nails the feel of that era, between the graphics, soundtrack and overall vibe. I also found it to be a great example of old-school challenge that's also fair, but you can also customize the difficulty to your liking. Easy recommendation for anyone looking for a fun retro action game - hope to see more from this developer at some point!

♥♥♥♥ game because of controls

[h1]Disclaimer[/h1] I decided to drop the game on last boss. EDIT: I since finished the last boss too after learning unclear ways of dodging some of its attacks, but it didn't change my opinion. [h1]TL;DR[/h1] I did first level on classic. It was fine. The second level was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long, tedious, unfun and badly designed that I decided to drop to modern. Level 7 broke me and I wanted to refund it, but I was at 2.2 hours. I reached last boss and decided I was done after I couldn't dodge some of its attacks for 8 lives straight. Good bones and presentation are squandered by terrible level design and plain unfairness. If you are going to say 'it's supposed to be unfair, it's evoking NES!' You haven't played NES games. There are some notoriously difficult NES games like Ninja Gaiden, true, but plenty are tough but fair. This game is not fair. [h1]Description[/h1] Classic platformer. There's nothing here that would make it unique and it doesn't necessarily have to be. [h1]Pros:[/h1] [b]+ Artstyle[/b] Gorgeous pixel art, areas are distinct, sprites look good. [b]+ Music[/b] Chiptune goodness. [h1]Cons:[/h1] [b]- Unreadable backgrounds[/b] I had PLENTY of situations where these elaborate, colorful levels had areas I thought I could jump onto, but couldn't and vice versa. This alone - in a game that takes away a whole LIFE when you fall into a pit - is enough for me not to recommend it. This is plainly unfair. Developers should be ashamed of themselves for making the challenge rely on leaps of faith. [b]- Controls[/b] For starters - when other reviews mentioned that ledge grabbing doesn't work sometimes, I found myself not agreeing because I didn't have the issue. Until in later levels I started noticing it too. Sometimes the game simply doesn't work and you don't grab a ledge. There are other issues with controls too. For example you have a net you can grab and climb and an enemy on it. Net is also being blasted by electricity so you don't want to grab it. In order to kill the enemy - you have to jump and hold up and shoot. But holding up will make you grab the net, dealing damage to you. This is classic example of controls not being fit for purpose. There's no way of hitting that enemy without taking damage. There was also a weird moment where I simply could not make my character turn to face left. The input did not work until I jumped off a platform I was on and then turned left mid-air. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3701041954 [b]- Bosses[/b] Boss of the second level is plain RNG unfairness. It's a bunch of hobos on a truck, your goal is to shoot them off. It has many different attack patterns and some of them - I swear put him in invulnerable state for prolonged periods of time where you get like 2 hobos in range you can quickly kill and then you have to wait for good 30 seconds while under fire for the opportunity to do anything else. Other times he will RNG into a pattern that exposes him so much that you can almost zero him during that one attack. Fifth boss has this idiotic design where if you get hit - you will fall and most likely - onto him. And because of contact damage, you can easily take multiple hits of damage after being tagged once. Garbage. Then it's the very last boss. Penultimate boss is quite fun, although trash to learn. But last boss is just screen-wide spam and most of the fight you can't even touch him. [b]- Hurtboxes[/b] Your hitbox is way fatter than the sprite. I had way more instances than it is reasonable where I was only in general proximity to something yet the game counts it as a hit. It's the worst on the last boss laser attack, the explosions are way too large to be dodged reliably and they happen while other bullets and hazards box you in anyway, preventing you from being able to avoid damage. [b]- Cheap difficulty[/b] Plenty of times you see a platform you need to jump to, only for an enemy to materialize on the other end which you could not have seen prior to getting fked by it. On classic difficulty this will result in a hit that knocks you into a bottomless pit and takes away a life, resetting you to last checkpoint. This is unreasonable. Plenty other moments like that, where the only way to avoid a hazard is being blessed with precognition. [b]- Lives not resetting[/b] You can lose a life, get brought back to the start of the level and... what's the point of not restarting whole level with all your lives intact? If you reset from checkpoint - I get it. You lose a life, you go back to checkpoint. But you have unlimited continues, meaning you can ALWAYS go back to the start of the level. So, before you unlock first checkpoint, if you die - why not just NOT take away a life? What's the point of taking away life? To have me go to menu and restart manually? This sort of programming limitation was more understandable on actual NES hardware where limited space was a thing + used a very low level programming language. I get it [b]- Lvl 7[/b] Holy fk is it bad. It's a bunch of timing jumping puzzles that don't work well with the controls and you get way too few checkpoints along the way. [b]- Contact damage[/b] I know most NES games have contact damage. I don't care. It's lazy design, but I forgive it if the game is otherwise strong. This one isn't so no leeway. [b]- Story[/b] I like when there's more context to the levels than just 'here's a level, do it'. There is dialogue with an NPC in every map, but it's so meaningless I would have preferred it not to be there at all. Curse of The Moon has struck the perfect balance of simple, fun story with very short, snappy dialogue that doesn't waste your time. There is a bit more to it at the very end, it's like devs woke up near the end of development and decided to put the dialogue interface to some use other than pointless drivel. [h1]Lowdown[/h1] I bought it for Easter to have a nice, fun throwback to NES era. I would have done better playing Castlevania, Contra or Double Dragon. I'd give Prison City a [h1]4/10[/h1] I played worse games, but I also played plenty of better ones. I recommend Infernax to anyone who wants to play something that feels modern while looking retro, or Curse of The Moon 1 - if you want a proper throwback that feels retro and is fair.

Great game. This soundtrack is through the roof. So much good stuff here. Graphics are great to look at. Game is a challenge too. If you like retro anything, grab it.

Prison City is a 2D Retro Action Platformer about "Hal" a special agent sent out on a mission to defeat the wardens around the city and destroy their plans. The game offers over 9 different zones each with their unique palette design and enemies. The platforming sections will really keep you on your toes with this one, lots of traps and pitfalls that you have to be wary of. The levels also offer secret upgrades that you can get stronger with in order to defeat your foes. Solid controls and responsive combat system that you will definitely enjoy. The music soundtracks for each zone is very well composed and I really loved it, the retro 8-bit classic music that is known since the childhood days, the devs really didn't disappoint with this one. The boss fights can be tough if you're not timing your jumps / slides correctly and you can get killed very quick if you're not careful. The designs were super nice and has really some unique ideas!! It's a very recommended 2D Retro Action Platformer for the fans of the genre or if you love retro action in general. Overall Rating 10/10