I have lost count of the number of games I’ve bought just because they looked vaguely interesting and they’ve been cheap enough for my curiosity to override my aversion to spending money on things I don’t really need…hell, that’s probably a good 90% of my Steam library summarised. Most of the time when I get around to these games – IF I get around to them – I’m usually glad I didn’t pay the default price, and put it behind me. Sometimes I get lucky, though.

So here’s Goblin Sword.

For a smartphone game, this was actually really polished and enjoyable, once again challenging my perception that smartphone titles are absolute trash. Well, maybe that’s a little unfair – my bitterness towards the platform comes from most of these games having awful controls (giant buttons on screen that you have to tap? Ugh…) and never making it to consoles…and Square Enix. Just Square Enix, period. It’s always fucking smartphone games with Square Enix these days.

But yeah! This game was absolutely perfect for casual play, and it had a frightening “just one more stage” loop to it that actually had me finishing it in 2 days. There was some really great stage design in here, too – five hidden objects per stages in 2 treasure chests and 3 gems, some of them very cleverly hidden. I was jumping into every wall and scouring every floor for invisible entry points soon enough, and I actually didn’t mind this at all – it was engaging and not too frustrating…most of the time. The extra stages seemed to be designed solely to be cruel, and I had to leave a couple of them until I had additional hearts, because I needed the breathing room for damage. Why is it always spikes…

There was a surprising amount of variety in this too, both in terms of enemy design and in your armaments. Weapons having their own magic attacks meant that there was a point in using weaker or slower weapons at times, and the relics were so useful I wish I could have equipped more than one. Do I take a familiar, or the ability to triple jump? At one point I pretty much HAD to use the Pyro Vest because of the lava pools everywhere, so that they were incorporated this way into the level design at points showed some real foresight too.

I think my only complaint here would be that the armour is just cosmetic: it would have been nice to see the variety in weapons and relics replicated in armour. Perhaps you could have been made temporarily invulnerable, or taken reduced damage at the cost of movement speed, or invisible for a brief peirod, or…something. Bit of wasted potential there.

Boss battles were basic, but pretty great – the pixel art really leant each one personality and style, and they had clearly defined patterns…and no bullshit weak points. Just large health bars, making it one part strategy, one part war of attrition. A couple of them got me a few times, but that was primarily because I’m impatient and greedy with hits.

But – and there’s always a but, isn’t there? – the music in this game was GODAWFUL. It was bland and repetitive and given that there were 15 stages on average that used the same track it got old very quick. I know, it’s unreasonable to expect different music for every stage (I mean, it’s not like this is a Mario or Megaman game or something) but…ugh, maybe every 5 stages? This game was in dire need of more and better music. I never, EVER want to hear this OST again. Ever. Ugh.

But overall, this was actually pretty damn great. For a low-cost smartphone port, this was more enjoyable than some of the higher budget, more reputable stage-based platformers I’ve played, providing stages that were (mostly) just the right length, sufficiently challenging so as to be engaging without being cheap and frustrating, with a pixel art style that I definitely approve of and wish more big budget titles would utilise, because pixel art is timeless and much more expressive and appealing than more “impressive” visuals. Less is more.