You can strongly dislike automatic side scrolling platformers and still love playing Dark Scrolls. I am proof in the proverbial pudding – I struggled to put it down. What sets Dark Scrolls apart from other platformers is its focus on simplicity. It's a great co-op platformer that's merely held back by its balance and relatively punishing progression. Its charm and co-op chaos will win you over the next time you want a party game to play with your friends!
I was never a fan of Super Mario Bros’ automatic side-scrolling levels. The constantly moving level and threat of missing content was anxiety-inducing. I wanted to make my way through the simple 2D levels at my own pace, dangit. In my first few minutes of playing doinksoft’s Dark Scrolls, I became afraid that I would be miserable playing this SNES-era inspired roguelike platformer. I was dead wrong: I enjoyed it quite a bit with a small number of caveats.
My familiarity with doinksoft was their previous release with Devolver Digital, Gunbrella. When I previewed it back in 2023, I considered it a fever dream of creativity that blended Mary Poppins with Mega Man. It worked well in practice despite the wildness of concepts distilled in a single game. I mention this here as a means of praising doinksoft and Devolve Digital: They make some creative (and fun) bite-sized games.
Dark Scrolls is no different. It’s charmingly retro and oozes nostalgia from almost every angle.
Playing Dark Scrolls is like playing a Super Mario Bros. side-scroller. It emphasizes simple combat for up to four players, features some roguelike progression, and is presented like a 16-bit game straight out of the early 90s with modern vibrance. There’s some shmup bullet dodging elements that make the game look like pixelated chaos, too. Oh, and it’s designed for solo and co-op play!
Right from the jump, I enjoyed Dark Scrolls’ simplicity. For a retro-inspired 2D inspired, I had all the classic inputs: a single attack (that could be held down for infinite attacks in a single direction), a double jump (with minor differences), and a special ability that could be utilized once I had accumulated 5 stars by defeating enemies.
In my first run, I chose to be Grizz the Barbarian, an orange warrior-type character who would throw axes. His kit seemed to resonate well with me in the hub space where I could try out my attacks against a red punching bag and swap out my emotes at a purple vending machine. Off I went into a magical forest full of spiders that would drop from the ceiling, zombies that would randomly pop out of the ground, and more threats. As the level progressively scrolled to the right, I had to keep up with stage’s blocks to keep myself from being pinched. Slaying enemies would yield a burst of coins that would ricochet on every surface they touched. It was like I was playing Super Smash Bros because of how I would satisfyingly obliterate enemies off screen and scramble to pick up coins in their wake.
At a set point in the level, I was thrown into a gauntlet for 30s where I had to defeat as many enemies as possible. I heard the devs call this a “battle block” during one of their videos. The more enemies I defeated, the better my reward. In one run, I was so efficient that I had 10s to spare and was rewarded with a cannon that shot me to the level’s merchant before facing the boss.
Each level had a merchant who sold me perks that I could assign to one of my star levels. As you recall, I could cast my special ability when my character had reached 5 stars; using my ability consumed my stars and set me back at 0. When it came to perks, I could assign a perk at a star level so that when I reached the specific star level, my character’s attacks would be temporarily infused with an element (or another effect entirely).
The perk system was a smart way for my character to get some temporary power spikes in the heat of battle. It was also a great way to have the player use their ability instead of sitting on it and waiting for a boss battle. To take advantage of perks, one must use their ability and rebuild their star meter. I realized quite early on that putting Haste (a perk that granted me a massive attack speed boost for a few seconds) at my 0-star tier would quickly let me hit the 5 star threshold for using my special ability in very little time. When I got more perks in the 1-star and 2-star slots, the Haste ability allowed me to stack powers for some devastatingly powerful attacks that were quite useful against bosses.
I digress. Back to my first run.
After leaving the merchant and his pet goose (wonderful touch, doinksoft!), I went off to face a talking tree that planned on turning me into fertilizer. Because I didn’t know his attack patterns, his purple bullets made short work of me and ended my run. Womp womp. In true roguelike fashion, I was sent back to the hub where I could spend currency I had obtained from the run on unlocking more perks or another character.
In terms of roguelike progression, Dark Scrolls feels like RETURNAL in that permanently unlocking perks means that they’re added to a pool of potential options that the shopkeeper can stock. There are very little evident sources of permanent power. Subsequent runs won’t have the player feeling like they’re more powerful than they were in the previous unsuccessful run. This means that the player is given an opportunity to mix and match perks to see what works (and what doesn’t) in a procedurally generated side-scrolling sandbox. There are some character-specific side-quests that grant rewards on a per-character basis (like slaying a certain number of bosses), but the rewards aren’t the most clear as to what they do. For instance, what is Ducky Ducky? The game does not tell me, but I unlocked it on Grizz after defeating 10 bosses.
Regardless of that steep progression and satisfaction curve, Dark Scrolls is quite fun and hits that “one more run” threshold of addiction that elevates a decent roguelike to a fun one. The branching paths across worlds added a light touch of variety, as did the secrets I uncovered. But, the most fun was to be had when playing with friends. Dark Scrolls’ co-op is something I would have expected to play in a modern arcade, perfect for a Friday night fun or a cozy game night on the couch. If you liked Castle Crashers’ co-op, Dark Scrolls will scratch that arcade-y itch well.
The biggest sin that Dark Scrolls commits is its character balance. Of the five characters I tested (again, there are several more – don’t worry), Grizz the Barbarian was far more powerful and consistent than the rest of the cast. His double jump-turned-ground-pound gives him a boost of height and several frames of invincibility. His Axe Nova of a special move cleared the screen and made the little battle blocks a breeze because of how his axes would fill most of the screen. I didn’t get that same sense of powerful satisfaction like I did with Pigeon or Emerys – both of which were also unlocked from the start and available to be selected for runs.
If there was a way to make it so that other characters had some more power, it would be easier for me to want to invest more time into playing with the rest of the cast. It would also make it so that players weren’t compelled to be him in co-op mode to prevent runs from being arbitrarily cut short.
doinksoft has made multiple platformers over the years. Frankly, they should keep doing so. With the release of Dark Scrolls, I see creative ideas and iterations in the co-op space – a space that’s been underserved over the years save for the retro beat-em-ups from the folks at Dotemu. It’s great to see doinksoft sticking to what they do well because they’re keeping the retro platformer space alive and nuanced. Sure, I might want another classic-feeling game with a different spin. I might want to play something that isn’t a roguelike, too. But, I’m a child of the 90s. I want to relive my afternoons at the arcade with engaging platformers and well-designed pixel art. Dark Scrolls is fun as hell and is full of pixelated silliness I love.
You can strongly dislike automatic side scrolling platformers and still love playing Dark Scrolls. I am proof in the proverbial pudding – I struggled to put it down. What sets Dark Scrolls apart from other platformers is its focus on simplicity. It’s a great co-op platformer that’s merely held back by its balance and relatively punishing progression. Its charm and co-op chaos will win you over the next time you want a party game to play with your friends!
