The Legend of Gwen is heading to Steam and Switch on 16th February and promises to be a “platform game with magic, strange creatures and epic combats” according to developer WiwiGames. You play as Glen the witch who must visit all the magic moons to destroy the evil and save the witches school. It’s aimed at those that enjoy 3D platformers and may rise eyebrows for its steep difficulty curve.
Each moon is broken down into several levels that once completed open up a boss stage. There are a few different types of levels but most center around collecting all the stars and heading to the exit before a timer runs out. You also have a lives counter and will need to completely restart the mission once you get game over.
While this does create a true retro feel, it’s a little redundant in today’s gaming world as you have infinite continues and the game saves after every level. The developer is clearly going for that retro gameplay feel and it succeeds in that. The Legend of Gwen feels generic in places but has enough charm sprinkled here and there for those that are drawn to the look.
The presentation would make you think this is aimed at young kids but this game is refreshingly hard to complete. You will fall off into the abyss quite a lot and some of the bosses are tough to take down. There are a lot of levels to complete and the difficulty is the game’s best feature.
If you like cute, chibi graphics and enjoy a platforming challenge you will find some joy here. However, the sluggish controls and lack of originality in the gameplay means The Legend of Gwen can only be recommended to hardcore platform fans. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong here but there are better platformers out there at this price point.
