Infernax

Weren’t Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest weird anomalies?

Two classic series, two polarizing games. But keep in mind… there was no standard in place after the first Zelda and Castlevania. Nintendo and Konami had no blueprint to follow from. A sequel could have literally been anything. A carbon copy. An educational game. A racer. A turn-based RPG.

Infernax, strangely, feels like the best possible version of those sequels. Plus a smidge of Ninja Gaiden. It terrorizes players with the brutal difficulty of the Castlevania series and The Adventure of Link. Finding the location of quests and dungeons can feel obtuse, like those poorly translated mysteries in Simon’s Quest and the dead overworld Link traveled through. And main character Alcedor can level up his abilities by grinding out monster kills for minutes on end.

It also makes inspiration painfully obvious when ancient players like me recognize a wall and smack at it hoping for a “pot roast” or crouch at a dead end wondering if a tornado will carry them off. Spoiler: the pot roast (as it was called Konami) is actually a rotted chicken that poisons Alcedor and the tornado merely kills him by tearing him limb from limb.

Lord, even the Konami code turns Alcedor into the random Contra dude and turns his mace into a gun, skewering the difficulty of the game because everything can be shot from a distance.

Berzerk Studios makes no qualms about what kind of game Infernax is and the DNA responsible for birthing it. This is a cut and dry nostalgia piece that will charm the pants off starry-eyed children and adults that were gaming in the strange, primal days of the 80s. It’s also one in a long line of titles that capture the lightning in the bottle like Shovel Night, or Super Meat Boy, or Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, or Axiom Verge.

Infernax is strong on its own but might not always elevate itself beyond classic roots. Part of that, I think, is because it so closely aligns itself with those sequel oddities. While The Adventure of Link and Simon’s Quest are idiosyncrasies–especially when considering the trajectory of the entirety of their respective series–their quirks ultimately don’t age that well.

Poor translation or not, Simon’s Quest had frustratingly vague goals that were exacerbated by the punishing nature of cheap deaths and bad localization. The Legend of Zelda was purposefully mysterious and its top-down perspective helped reign in the space players could explore. But in the sequel, Link’s enemies could be frustratingly tough and the secrets far too hidden.

Infernax simply asks players to be Alcedor and destroy the source of evil that has taken over the land. It’s goal as simple as killing Dracula or rescuing the maiden in distress.

Then Infernax begins to layer on systems and goals and challenges and things to do. The whole time dripping with 8-bit reverence. It’s spectacularly bloody. The monstrous bosses are feasts of artistic pixels. The jumps require painstaking accuracy. The correct paths seem to disenfranchise those who chose right over left. Enemies respawn when revisiting a screen.

Yes, Infernax is very familiar. I cut my teeth on these games as a child, never possessing the mental reflexes and the experience to beat them until years later when I knew what’s up. I love the way Berzerk Studio had the gall to give Alcedor a weapon that required intimate proximity to kill his foes, where anything that isn’t a shambling corpse feels initially intimidating. At first, players will have to bash baddies multiple times with the mace before they fall. More than two hits mean death.

Once the red pixels of blood begin to congeal on Alcedor–a nice visual touch that likely would have been a no-no 30 years ago–experience points and gold begin to accrue. Upgrade Alcedor’s damage, his health pool, his mana points. Buy a permanent extra life, protective armor, a potion slot. Then you’ll be able to better face that boss in the barn who merely spawns countless zombies. Before, it took too much time to thin out his thralls and jump over for a quick hit before he disappeared. A thunder spell may have helped too.

Infernax is often a punishing game because it so rigidly sticks to the basics of yesteryear. Enemies can hurt a lot and without upgrading, can do a lot of damage. The answer? Either improve your raw talent or grind out experience. Just like those games I continue to reference asked of players.

Before realizing I was in over my head and died to the first dungeon’s boss after running out of health and mana, I dreaded having to backtrack about a dozen screens to get back into town and purchase upgrades. But I knew I had to. So I slowly trudged through mainly flat areas and watched as night fell and spawned slightly more challenging enemies and triggered a quest I had been given earlier. I almost forgot that Infernax features a few choice-based moments that can affect the ending and potentially help or hinder your current playthrough.

I became a little bored with the backtracking, at least thankful that I was earning coin and experience along the way. But when I arrived back in the town I still couldn’t finish the quest where the woman asked me to help her husband in a house underground. But a guard gave me a hundred coin for killing that thief in the night. And I tried to return to my starting point to see if anything was new. A skeleton boss rose out of the ground, which was pretty cool. Though I do think the enemies and the environments can grow a bit stale over time.

Did I mention that in my first go of that dungeon I literally took the right path instead of the left and was met with a locked door? Well, I had to backtrack through a few screens while taking damage from the enemies that respawned and the traps that were easier to navigate when moving to the right. Of course, when I claimed the key I had to pass through all those rooms and monsters a third time. Bleh.

And that right there is a pain point that existed decades ago and exists here in Infernax. And let me be clear: I understand the decision. I simply don’t like it. While it does pad out the playtime, it also disenchants me from the world Berzerk Studio has created. No longer do I relish the incredible, era-accurate music or celebrate the tight controls.

When I was prepping to make a jump that required almost split-second timing and made it the first time, my anxiety washed away with jubilation. Having to repeat that same jump a second time produced diminishing returns. Having to do it a third time tainted my feelings with fear. Of course this was my first time in the dungeon. Remember I died at the boss and would ultimately have to do everything a fourth time. The fourth time around I felt nothing. I tried jumping over enemies, rushing my way past everything I could. And yeah, that led to more mistakes.

Infernax features a classic and casual difficulty. Classic starts players from their last save with none of the progress they had earned. Casual merely strips away some of the coin and experience with a bit less progression lost. Honestly, you should be playing on classic. That’s who this game is geared toward. But there are “classic” choices here that I don’t stand by merely because they don’t entirely respect the player.

After beating the first dungeon and its fairly rudimentary but gruesome-looking boss, I plunged forward. I met a few dead ends and eventually stumbled upon what I assumed was the second dungeon since it awarded me an upgrade to break weak walls that would unlock more areas in the world. But getting there required two screens’ worth of careful jumping puzzles that went on for too long. I was required to jump on slowly ascending and descending platforms that had spikes at the bottom, all while moving to the left. A missed jump would likely mean death. A missed jump at the final platform likely would have meant a thrown controller at the prospect of repeating it all again.

That’s where Infernax can sometimes get it wrong. It doesn’t recognize that one moment of a long thing or two instances of a quick mechanic is better than stretching that concept out as far as possible. And because I’ve done this dance before, I often gamed the system with Infernax. Kindly, a save point that instantly heals Alcedor and replenishes his mana are placed right outside a dungeon. If I took too much damage on the first screen, I would go back outside, heal, and do it all again. If a dungeon had branching paths, I would take one and finish it, go back to the save, and repeat the process. It felt dirty but kind of necessary, my own kind of casual mode.

Infernax truly doesn’t feel catered to anyone that hasn’t, at some point in their life, been broken by the unruly math of NES programming, quality control, and a sadistic developer. I can understand that frustrations will stem from an easy-to-spot point of inspiration but I can also understand that there will be players who have no tolerance for it. Thankfully, Infernax‘s wonderful mood and aesthetic are coupled with modern design choices. Upgrade paths, multiple spells, a brisk length, and tons of odes to the past push Infernax into a title worth remembering.