8Doors: Arum's Afterlife Adventure is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This Nintendo Switch game is a metroidvania type platformer with okay-ish 2D "paper art" style cartoon illustrations instead of, you know, computer graphics you expect to see in a video game from 2021. I mean, 3D graphics were invented some time in the 1990's right? At least by 2015 they had invented 3D graphics. So what's going on here? Laziness I guess.

This is a Korean culture inspired story about a young girl who ventures into the afterlife so she can do 2D Nintendo Switch handheld console brawling and occasionally backtracking to unlock new areas etc etc... this ain't Hollow Knight, though, and platforming itself is a massively obsolete genre, so throwing one out in 2021 is a lot like making a black and white silent film in the 21st century... it's not impossible for something presented in such an obsolete manner to be successful but the quality of everything else in the production has to be godlike to overcome those self inflicted handicaps... and I can tell you right now, 8Doors does not have a godlike implementation.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.

The developers didn't design the game for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at 1080p, a very low resolution that became mainstream back in 2006 and became obsolete when 4K entered the mainstream in 2014. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

8Doors: Arum's Afterlife Adventure has the pathetically optimistic price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Europa Universalis IV", "Monster Hunter World" or "Hearts of Iron IV". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

its just hollow knight

I've given up on this, not because its super hard but because every aspect of it is frustrating.
When you die you almost always end up having to go back stupidly far, the boss fights are really just you fighting with the sluggish controls. The choice of weapon often means nothing or you don't have a choice due to some mechanic. Same with the frog, you are either forced to use it or you wont use it because then you don't have access to your weapons.

As a person who has played a stupid number of metroidvanias, outside of the artstyle there isnt much redeemable here.

Thought it was pretty fun at until about a quarter of the way in, then it turned to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Honestly atrocious game - so unsatisfying to go around the map, so badly designed bosses...

To elaborate, I believe the first boss to be really important to setting the tone of the game. When I was playing ori 2, I remember the 1st boss gave me quite some trouble. But it was important to show how to kite out the bosses and enemies, it shows you how the combat will flow in the game. In Hollow Knight you get the same thing - the first encounters are meant to teach you how to move properly. They are punishing, but fair.
Here you get a 2nd boss phase on each boss(at least the first 3), which I think is just bad game design. The second phase is reserved for harder, more impactful encounters. Can you think of how it would feel if there was another boss with 2 phases in Hades or HK - the feeling you get from fighting the BBEG would be just ruined, because you would have already seen it couple(or in this case too many) times.

That said, the first boss is really really bad. You have no mobility and your weapon is so slow, it has only a 3-hit combo, and mathematically(at least from what i figured out) it's most efficient to jump auto until you kill it. But it is so tanky for no reason. It tanks 20 hits at least and you have to be really wary of it's patterns, that also movement predict you. This is not a good first boss. What does it teach you? That the dev had a wrong idea? That the rest of the game will be the same as the 1st boss - dissapointing?

I really hated the game after the first boss, but I continued a bit more(i explored 3 regions). It didn't get better, in fact, there was even worse boss, that made me pull out the "Bury the light" tech(man do i feel motivated every time).

If you had more things to do with the frog, like something in shantae, maybe the game would have redeeming qualities, but I cannot recommend it. There are better metroidvanias out there, that deserve your attention.

Frankly, it's a poor rendition of Hollow Knight where the lifted features are done to such a mediocre degree that by playing this game, I appreciate Hollow Knight more.

cute game, not my cup of tea, no mouse support. Jumping doesnt feel smooth, it feels like im on rails.

At its best, this game can be pretty fun to play. The movement feels pretty decent, combat can be okay, the visual design is nice, story is pretty interesting, music is alright. Unfortunately, there's a handful of things that really drag down the experience.

First, the combat. While it's alright most of the time, the bosses are a real chore to fight. They usually have 3-4 attacks which feel pretty samey on most of the bosses. A 2-3 hit combo, a ground slam (sometimes with a wave spreading from it), a lunge, and a projectile. The bosses all have a second phase which doesn't really mix things up so much as speed up and extend the attacks, which honestly sucks because it means you have to relearn the timing on what are basically the same attacks. Additionally, bosses just have too damn much health. It's a slog to take them down.

The large health pools on the bosses wouldn't be such an issue, except for another problem with the combat. Enemies do crazy damage, and your health potions are pretty pathetic, even with upgrades. At the start of the game, you can use all your potions and not fully heal your health bar. Not sure who balanced this, but they did a very poor job of it.

The other issue that pops up sometimes is level design. Most of the platforming is fine, but you sometimes get areas with spectacularly irritating obstacles, frequently ones that you can't see while ascending or descending and you *will* take damage. Meaning you run into the poor healing issue again. It would help if the camera did a better job of staying ahead of you while moving vertically. Also, being able to hold up or down to shift the camera up or down to see what's coming would be incredibly helpful, but that feature was omitted from this game.

If the combat were rebalanced, bosses given a bit more variety, and the level design tuned up a bit more, I could definitely recommend this game, but as it stands, my desire to continue playing steadily got worn down by these issues until I reached the point I wasn't having fun anymore. There's potential here, but the game fails to reach that potential.

Thumbs down only really for the price. This is an interesting side scrolling Platformer, with minimal graphics and sound, other than a decent soundtrack. The art and Retro look make me interested in the stoy, but quickly you feel only the old platformer Arcade vibe. Definately has the Indy feel to it. (not altogether a bad thing)
At half the $20 price tag I would give this a thumbs up, but I don't feel you get your value at full price. I got this as a part of a bundle and consider it one of the better parts of that bundle, but alone, for full price, it's a pass.

If you read the first (most important?) paragraph in the description on Steam, what does it highlight about the game? Story driven – Korean folktales – finding Dad – solving mysteries. It doesn’t say a thing about boss fights. But there are boss fights everywhere! Tedious pattern-memorizing boss fights. Boss fights with a hard-for-hard’s-sake feel to them that makes me wonder about the developers. Are they mean-hearted people?? They give you an easy and normal difficulty to choose from at the start, but if you choose normal—you can’t change it! Again, are these developers mean-hearted? I was enjoying the parts of the game that the game’s description highlights, but I gave up because of the boss fights.