The spiritual successor to Cave Story came to Playism recently and I decided to jump at the chance to pick it up. I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about it, so I thought I would throw in my two cents about it in bullet point format.
Much like Cave Story before it, the game is very cute with a liberal dash of menace. Unlike Cave Story, however, the colors in Kero Blaster tend to be much brighter and vibrant.
It’s challenging but rarely unfair
the jump from Cave Story has been refined a bit, and feels very precise.
Likewise, the camera system from Cave Story is in this game and also has some welcome refinements (less wild swinging when you turn around)
Unlike the unified world of Cave Story, Kero Blaster has a set of individual stages.
Exposition is pretty light, while still giving you some backstory. A lot of the narrative elements about what’s going on is shown within the stages, and uses the game’s 8-bit vocabulary to it’s advantage.
The game isn’t particularly long, but I didn’t find it to be much of an issue. My first play through of the game was 2:45, with multiple game overs. Someone who is really good at this game could probably polish off the whole thing in 90 minutes their first go, or within 15 minutes in a speed-run.
Despite it’s length, the second I finished it I wanted to play it again. That’s the kind of game it is.
You can buy the game by itself for 8 bucks USD, or 10 with the soundtrack. Get the version with the soundtrack. It’s really good. I bought the soundtrack version blindly, but you can find examples on Tumblr under the Kero Blaster tag to make a more informed purchase.
You really should consider buying this game if you can afford it.
In fact, you should buy this game right now, play it, and then tell everyone how good it is. Here’s a link.