Dark Scrolls made me miss the glory of beating a retro side-scroller and now I want another Cuphead

Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but there’s nothing quite as rewarding as beating a difficult game. Growing up playing Bandicoot‘s Cold Hard Crash, figuring out Spyro‘s Tree Tops, learning the cruelty of permadeath early on in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and going Platinum in TimeSplitters‘ challenges will do that to a person.

The glory has since passed over to the likes of Elden Ring, Nine Sols, Fear & Hunger. My drive to beat them is not fuelled by nostalgia, but by pride, ego, and aura-farming. Seeing the words “PREY SLAUGHTERED” can bring a tear to any eye, yet there’s always the demand for more—for another challenge, for another hurdle to bulldoze over. I prayed something would satiate my hunger, so I turned to doinksoft’s Dark Scrolls.

Paying homage to the very games that shaped my childhood—Rayman and Abe’s Oddysee, Dark Scrolls is a 16-bit action-platformer that demands you come back for seconds