The difficulty in rating Tyr comes from the fact that it’s not all bad, it’s just not a good example of the game it wants to be. For every step it takes in the right direction there’s a misstep just around the corner, waiting to infuriate or induce tedium, sometimes both in equal measure. Rather than dwell on the negatives, what does Tyr do right?

Firstly, it’s apparent the music is pretty good. Strident and metallic, it does a good job of creating the heavy metal vibe any good shooter should have, maintaining energy and driving the player on. Whilst it doesn’t have very much in the way of variety or nuance, the sound track is certainly a notable high point. Sound effects are also acceptable, weapons sounding relatively meaty and traversal noise reflective of what your character is actually doing, be it wall sliding or jumping from one death to the next. Graphically, it’s more of a mixed bag. In game Tyr looks great, with colourful graphics and interesting sprites, each of the six stages looking different and representative of their differing environments. Enemy designs are generally good, although the bosses are somewhat underwhelming, and there’s a level of variety that goes beyond reuse of the same two or three enemies over and over. However, the story telling graphics, specifically the talking heads of your support team, Huginn and Muninn, are a tonal leap from the gritty heavy metal vibe that Tyr seems to be aiming at, and sometimes the storytelling slideshows are lacking some polish (although there’s very little plot to be found, and it’s more along the lines of “flavour text”). Finally, because of the colour palette in some areas, moving obstacles can become quite difficult to see leading to unintentional deaths due to an inability to spot safe zones.

What might work the best is the elemental weakness system. In a rock-paper-scissors type mechanic Tyr’s opposition all have a particular vulnerability (fire, ice or plasma) and Tyr can cycle through these elements to select the most effective payload to whittle down the resistance. Whilst weaponry never seems to be ineffective irrespective of the current weapon selected, there is a definite and satisfying damage bonus to be had by matching your weapon to the weakness, handily displayed by a character next to the enemy’s health bar. There are also several power up’s available, retained until Tyr is damaged which include a rapid fire laser, grenades and triple shot. Several of the latter stage power ups are pleasingly vicious, and it’s pleasantly surprising not losing the weapon should Tyr be hit with the power up set on standby (Tyr can have 2 power ups in addition to his standard weapon, with cycling through the three identical to element cycling).

Tyr’s progress is also not hindered by his manoeuvrability and responsiveness. I’m led to believe that this has been improved from the initial release, but your main character generally controls well and has the capacity to double jump, wall climb and dash. However, the jump doesn’t feel well calibrated for some of the platforming sections making them more arduous than they have any right to be, and Tyr’s dash has a somewhat irritating cool down. Whilst there’s an upgrade system, the limited allocation of power up points and inability to redistribute them or earn more by replaying levels is also somewhat saddening. Tyr becomes very platforming intensive, especially in a couple of the later stages, and with some of those obstacles representing instant death (the moving “plasma” barriers are the most egregious example) it can become incredibly infuriating to repeat arduous sections over and over again. Some of this repetition is probably intentional difficulty, but because of the colour palette in some areas the moving obstacles can become quite difficult to see leading to unintentional deaths.

Because repeat sections you will, as Tyr’s level design relies strongly on foreknowledge. Without any form of camera control at all, losing life to unexpected electrified floors, plummeting to your doom and colliding with enemies wandering below your position are all common hazards. It’s difficult to pin down whether it’s incredibly poor level design or intentional, but it’s incredibly unsatisfying to begin a stage, drop down from your starting platform and immediately land on an unseen enemy. In addition to not being able to see it, anything beyond the screen limits may as well not exist. Projectiles don’t travel beyond the borders and enemies are effectively deactivated you can’t shoot them and they can’t shoot you. Whilst this might be handy to fudge some difficult sections it makes no sense, and renders any sense of a connected world moot. Tyr’s boldest conceit, to limit the player to a mere sixty minutes to finish the game has dire implications on the gameplay, changing it from a shooter to a “dash through the level as fast as possible ignoring everything but the critical path” game.

There’s no point destroying enemies, no benefit to exploration, and if you get delayed just restart...each second might be critical. And as a result the interesting combat mechanic gets relegated to a footnote. Combat just takes time that is better spent making progress through the relatively short levels. Speaking of the levels, sometimes the design and checkpointing is woeful. This is especially the case on later levels where there might be a difficult section of platforming near the end, or even beginning, of the stage, followed by a wave of enemies or one hit kill barriers. Because the stages are quite small this may have been deemed a necessity, but thanks to the time mechanic and the small health bar it quickly becomes infuriating. It feels like lazy level design to create challenge and sadly is somewhat disincentivising for the player.

Then there’s the myriad of other ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The translation is woeful, and the as hinted at previously the writing is tonally at odds with the heavy metal feel that game seems to be aiming for. The childish quips from Huginn and Muninn feel wrong, as does the somewhat ill-advised T-Boy nickname. Spelling errors abound, at this point both in the game itself and even on the achievement list, and the level layouts are not represented accurately. Stages with angled, sloping corners are merely a background feature, a visual conceit with wall and the floor meeting at a standard ninety degrees. Placed immediately prior to a section of dangerous wall jumping, something that might otherwise be overlooked is frustrating due to the critical importance of height for that section. This also highlights the terrible i-frame timing. There’s no tolerance for mistakes, and no leeway due to almost no grace period following damage. A single error often results in multiple hits or even premature death, making the platforming sections more difficult than they should be.

The bosses are also uninspiring and it’s unclear whether they have weaknesses. Unlike the standard enemies they have no health bar or vulnerability indicator, both of which would be useful in determination of progress. They’re also not very engaging in design or mechanics, although they are thankfully deemed as separate stages, a restart allowing a quick repetition without the necessity of travelling through the preceding level. Whilst they’re not quite unfair, in certain instances attack patterns allow no safe haven, which in a shooter isn’t quite acceptable (in fairness this only happened with the first boss Garm). The game is also horrendously optimised and the link to Norse mythology is tenuous at best.

I wanted to like Tyr, imagining a challenging shooter, but with a time limit that encourages skipping through levels as quickly as possible and frustrating platforming sections, it’s hard to recommend a game that doesn’t make good on its initial promise. If you’re looking for a challenging shooter you’d be better off with something like RIVE or even Turrican 2. Not Recommended.

sigh, another failed wanabe mega man game. movement, and fighting feel way to floaty and it just throws everything else off. enemies take way to many hits even when you use their "weekness". probably to make the game "harder" since levels are on a timer. the 3 elemental gun sound fun until you relies you'll be forced to swap your weapon constantly as you do levels so you can do the best damage to enemies though you'll avoid any fight you can do to the timer. this game is just way harder than it needs to be do to bad programing also you can't skip cut scenes because i guess the dev thinks hes written Shakespeare (spoilers: it's not). the dev made a good try but i just don't feel this is worth it. 4/10

A Megaman X inspired platform/shooter based around Norse mythology. Looks promising but at this point is very early in early access. I would say it's not even in a playable state yet. Needs alot of work and polish to fix some serious control, camera and mechanical issues.
Maybe wait until a little more has been done on Tyr before trying yourself.

Retro style tough 2.5D action platformer Mega Man style.
It has simple controls but takes a bit of practice to get used to and once you get to the sweet spot it's easier and feels smoother; I rather use the d-pad than the stick to move around. It's about learning the enemies' spots and attacks to plan ahead, expect to die A LOT. It is a whole mission getting from one save point to another.
Also, I really like the art and music :)

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Tyr: Chains of Valhalla is a 2.5D hardcore platformer that has seen some major improvements!

The game begins with really awesome music, which carries through the game. It also begins with fantastic anime style artwork, which was stunning. The story is fairly interesting, since it is a modern day take on Norse mythology. You play as Tyr, who is created by O.Din (Professor Oswald Din), and your task is to stop L.Oki (Lemuz Oki). A lot of strange but intresting repurpose of mythological names that makes the initial read quite engaging.

The game looks great from the artwork and music from the beginning. The game renders beautiful in-game graphics in the background as well.
__________________
Most of my original review had to removed to make room for the Edit/Update:


I was contacted by the developer xbeto regarding a whole slew of changes that they have made since my original review was posted. This was still in closed beta, but he offerred me the code to try it out. I did that for about two and a half hours, and I have to say, this game is so much better.

The biggest issues I had were with the controls and how responsive the gameplay had been to the presets before the update. The following changes were made:
+ The jumping is a lot more controlled, with the height of jumping dependent on length of press, making it more reasonable to dodge some enemy fire.
+ I felt that with the dash bound to the Y button, I was not able to use it very well due to its physical location relative to the jump, has been mapped to both the Y button and the right trigger. I now use the right trigger to dash and it is so much better.
+ The dash had a set length previously, making it a bit difficult to manage smaller steps in the dash. Now it is as long as you hold it down, with a limit of course. There is also now a cooldown bar as well, for better clarity.
+ My issues with not being able to switch weapon type or element type while firing has been addressed. This feels a lot smoother now and I am very happy about that.
+ I had major issues with wallgrabbing and with attempting to move quickly off walls. This is completely fixed. The wallgrab and jump off feels smooth and easy. Much more of a response that should be in a platforming game.

I had trouble swallowing the fact that in order to progress through some parts, I basically had to use an effective glitch to move on:

+ The AI is a much more dynamic. You used to be able to pull them on the screen but not close enough to fire, and you can just sit there and pick them off. Now they trigger much earlier, their movements/aim much more dynamic. This has only made dealing with them a bit more difficult. But this kind of difficulty increase is something I can swallow. I think it is so much better than essentially taking advantage of a proximity trigger and picking off enemies before the trigger.

I felt that contact damage here was unfair, while this has not been directly addressed, the actualy ability to variably jump and with responsive wallgrabbing and jumping off makes the contact damage less important. It was not something that heavily plagued me this time around as it had been initially.

I had some issues with the tutorial not being very useful, this has been completely updated, there's no doubt that the new tutorial is significantly better.

Other improvements included better visual feedback when the appropriately colored weapon was used on the bosses. Some levels were modified as well.


1. The game currently is still only one difficulty. If you manage to beat it once, you get New Game Plus mode. But to get there may be doable for a small group of player. This is a super hardcore platforming experience. I am glad that the controls have been made a lot better and responsive because the game is enjoyable.
2. The only way to beat the game is by shortening your playthrough times for all of the levels combined to under an hour. If you cannot do that, you get a game over whenever and wherever you are, in the middle of a level, fight a boss, etc. This one hour time limit is a bit too strict, because each level is quite a challenge, and each subsection of each level between checkpoints feels like a challenge too. I am okay with this challenge now because the controls are better. But this continuous grind to perfect every movement along each part of each level might not be fun for some other people.
3. I still wish I could shoot diagonally when running forward with the linear weapons. I am totally okay that you can't, but it would be nice.

> I did manage to get farther with the improved controls, despite tough enemy responses with better AI dynamics.
> After my attempt to play this time, xbeto stuck around and chatted with me for about 20 minutes about further updates that they are planning, to possibly make this game more accessible to a wider audience. I thought that was just fantastic, so I have more updates to look forward to in the future.

In this updated review, I now have so few issues with this game, that I am modifying it to a recommendation. The game is not perfect, but it has everything I liked about before, with now much more improvements. Most of my concerns were addressed in the new update. I actually had a lot more fun playing through this time, and I look forward to playing it again, and I look forward to the potential future updates. I would give this game a 7/10 at this current state with the new update. I think it is now a title worth checking out, especially for people who love their hardcore platforming games.

I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

Tyr is a fun game that starts out slow but really picks up after you get some upgrades and a feel for the mechanics. The pull for me was the ability to retry levels for better times with realtime leaderboards. Speedrunner friendly, wouldn't be surprised to see this at a GDQ in the future.

This is probably something you should try if you like rockin music, norse mythology and megaman-esque gameplay.

A platform game with a great soundtrack.
The game is pretty simple, go from point A to point B and defeata a boss.

You can get used to the control, and when you understand the mechanics the game becomes really funny, I specially try the game with a speedruning tempo, so the game was pretty fast, but if you are the kind of people who want to kill everything, you are gonna take your time.
At the beginning the game try to stop you in some places, but when you learn some positions or patterns of the enemies you can defeat it.

The game can be a little hard sometimes, when is your first try in a level you dont know nothing, positions or what kind of enemies, maybe you will meet a new enemy and dont know how to react, but when you die some times you learn how to defeat it, or how to ignore it.
I think my first run take me like 2 hours, maybe a little more, but when I get some power ups and learn the levels I defeat it in 40 minutes, and I keep defeating my own records, actually is like a 10 minutes with power ups at maximum.

My advice to this game is, be careful when discover a level, learn the pattern of movement of enemies, and discover wich power up is better for you, I really prefer the dash one, beacuase it give me invulnerability with dash and I can spam it at maximum.

It SUCKS... if u wanna make an difficult game you need to make a good jogability, this isn't the case here, this game, its too bad sorry...

first up, i played only the "new" version i don't know about the problems with the old one
General:
i like the mega man games and i love northern mythology, so why don't give this a shot?
i fell in love after the demo, smooth gameplay and demanding lvl design, story is some kind of okay but not my focus anyways,
it's more the world setting which fascinate me.
u have 60 minutes to beat 6 stages and 6 bosses, hardly anyone will do that in their first attempt.
u can after u finished a stage go back and replay it to spare some time even when the timer counts 0
For every defeated boss, you get a power cell that you can use to improve your abilities
After u beat the game u unlock the boss rush mode where u can beat all bosses again in a row.

LVL design:
pretty demanding especially in u first run, but very satisfying if you know the surroundings and starting to speed it up.
especially niffelsm´s Lab and the last one is the pain in the ass and i was starting to hate these while im playing it but after i had done it i directly replayed it to beat my time.

Boss design:
the boss rng feel unfair sometimes but never impossible.
there are some classic bosses and some with great new ideas like nidhogg

Music:
most of the time a well fitting music

Conclusion:
a little short but ok for the price
i love it, i ll play it again 10/10

for those who are interested in a demanding platformer!

Not recommended for the faint of heart.

The graphics and animations are good, audio decent and the overall game mechanics are a nice change of pace with enemy weaknesses and various types of shot upgrades. The world seems interesting, but the characters were lacking for me. In fairness, I didn't spend much time with this because it was frustrating to play. The time crunch would be fun for some levels, but not the game as a whole. The difficulty is pretty high, so expect to die... a lot. The level designs seem uninspired and the overall feel was just meh... Plus the price seems a bit high for the average time to complete. If you enjoy a challenging run n gun style platformer, than you may find some worth in this game.