Game Reviews

Bravian Lands

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| Bravian Lands
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Bravian Lands
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| Bravian Lands

The retro scene is very much alive on mobile. In a way, it's a bit odd that arcade machines once admired for their large screens, loud, brash sound effects and vivid graphics should establish such a happy home on mobile, where the displays are small and the sound is frequently turned off to deter the glares of fellow commuters. Nevertheless, those tired old cabinets are finding themselves increasingly reinvigorated on phones, much to the joy of the greater mobile gaming public.

This has brought about a strange trend where some new, non-licensed games actually ape the stylings of the classic arcade generation. Bravian Lands is arguably one such title. In fact, it could easily be a port of some lesser-known early-'90s arcade game that propped up the walls of some dingy bowling alley downtown many moons ago.

However, it is simply a brand new title of the 'ye olde' platformer variety. In it, your job is to help beardy wizard Starion in ridding the land of the usual crowd of monstrous nasties. What this boils down to is 16 levels of solid platforming action, with enemies that get harder alongside weapons that get better, giving a fairly modest difficulty curve.

The environments change frequently enough to keep things from becoming visually stagnant. You make your way through forests, a castle and what looks like the inside of a volcano (we've never been in one so can't say for sure). All your weapons are ranged and of the simple forward-firing variety.

It's not in these passable features that the game disappoints, though. What confines Bravian Lands to the mediocre are its clunky controls. Only one button can be pressed at once, so you can't shoot while crouching, for instance, and nimble platforming jumping is off the menu. Still, the game doesn't become that frustrating because even the trickier parts of the platform leaping are fairly simple, and can generally be traversed with a few jabs at the diagonal jump key.

It does make winged enemies a little more irritating, though. If one flies into you, you're likely to cop it because not only does the little blighter keep on flying through you, but you remain more or less paralysed from the attack, too. Levels aren't too large and you can start from any completed stage after having run out of lives, so those pesky bats aren't quite a game killer, but the unrefined feel of enemy interaction doesn't do the game any favours.

Boss characters, of which there are four, do nothing to redress the balance,either. Your fire continues past the point you can see, so the easiest way to win encounters without too much aggravation or effort is simply to sit near the left extreme of the level and fire. After a short while you'll come out victorious, having barely seen the boss onscreen.

To be clear, Bravian Lands isn't a terrible game. The visuals are reasonably suited and none of the game's flaws are fatal enough to make you stop playing before the 16 levels are up – even if this admittedly doesn't take a great deal of time. That said, the breed of lo-fi gaming you'll encounter here does place the experience towards the lower end of the mobile titles within the platform genre.

Bravian Lands

Control issues and lack of flair keep Bravian Lands stuck in mediocrity. You could do worse, but there are many far better platformers out there
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