Jerrel Dulay, the utter madman of a developer behind one-man studio Sungrand, continues to surprise by releasing free homebrew games in addition to his commercial game releases. He’s recently released his first PSP game, Silver Falls: Battle Fever - Galaxy Bound Curse. There’s very minimal story here as it’s an all gameplay focused score chaser, but it uses the aesthetic and setting of Galaxy Bound Curse, hence the subtitle. Obviously being on the PSP instead of the Game Boy, the sprites are a lot sharper with a lot more of the world on-screen at once, but it’s still unmistakably based on Galaxy Bound Curse. As it’s a PSP homebrew, you’ll need either a PSP with CFW, a PS3 with CFW, a Vita or PSTV with CFW and Adrenaline, or - the easiest option - an emulator like PPSSPP. The gameplay is very simple. You run around in the woods by a small lake or large pond and kill all of the cryptids and mutated animals you see. Or at least kill as many as you can; they spawn endlessly. There’s a campfire on the south side of the pond that you can use to your advantage; lure enemies into it, and not only will it delay them as they have to go around, but they’ll take heavy damage when they hit the fire. You play as Sheriff Fred, so your primary weapon is his gun, but you can pick up secondary weapons that you find as you run around the map. My personal favorite is the bear trap that you can place in front of approaching enemies for some extra damage, but there are several options. I’m absolutely terrible at the game - my score has yet to break 1000 - but it’s a lot of fun and perfect for pick-up-and-play when you have five or ten minutes to kill. On the subway or pooping at work? Whip out your PSP and take a little Silver Falls break. Because of the higher resolution and sharper image of the PSP compared to the Game Boy, the game looks fantastic. It retains the style of Galaxy Bound Curse, so you’ve still got the limited colors and sprites, but everything just looks so sharp and crisp. The sound design is classic Silver Falls and feels very much like what a Frontier game mode in Galaxy Bound Curse would have been like. Between rounds, you spawn at the campground behind the bar in town, and there are people you can talk to both inside and outside of the bar. This is the only real bit of story in this game. The characters that spawn seem to be random, and their dialog is mostly references to other games - some released, some still in the work - that sound like regular lore drops to the uninitiated but are clear and apparent allusions to long-time Silver Falls fans. Silver Falls: Battle Fever - Galaxy Bound Curse is not only the first Silver Falls game on PSP but also the first in a planned “Battle Fever” sub-series that Jerrel plans to expand to other games’ style. I don’t know when it will be ready for release, but I know he has one in the works based on 3 Down Stars, and I’m definitely excited for that. I’ve played games that I paid real world money for that were much shallower and less entertaining than this, and all this game costs you is...nothing. It’s a free download. With that in mind, you’ve got no reason not to download it and at least give it a try. Who knows? You may end up liking it and want to check out Galaxy Bound Curse (which is also a free download). My Rating - C |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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