"Snack Break" Game Review: Ghost Hunter
A Quick Playthrough From A Game By Its Cover 2023 Game Jam Entry
Rating: ★★★★☆
Status: completed, free download
Genre: top-down, retro, adventure, dungeon crawler
Gameplay: single-player
Playtime: 15 minute
Replay Value: low
Difficulty Level: Beginner
Gameplay and Mechanics: 5/5
Graphics and Art Style: 4.5/5
Story and Theme: 4.5/5
Ultimate Assessment:
This pixel prize quick snack game, offers a delightful blend of dungeon crawler meets ghost grave robber. The protagonist, shunned by her village for her frightening ability to see ghosts, presents a unique premise.
Featuring a classically inspired retro art style and familiar WASD mechanics, this little ghost loving girl will give you a welcome 15 minute break in your day. “Ghost Hunter” is low commitment yet provides a stimulating stimulating challenge to improve with every level. Recover every lost soul in the town’s graveyard and ward off evil spirits coming to haunt you. Glenda will get the job done with her Shovel of Resurrection!
I loved this experience and found myself wanting more! This game gets four out of five stars for executing an amusing challenge with great accessibility, I only wish there was an expansion of the game where we could be presented with a narrative solution to Glenda’s hard work purging the town of ghastly beings.
Don’t let this short-run game fool you, there’s quite a bit of history and intrigue behind its development. What I cannot articulate as anything other than a small chance of fate and opportunity — I have stumbled upon another game created for an itch.io game jam. Before I get ahead of myself, let me tell you a little bit about the Famicase Exhibition.
Hosted by METEOR Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, the Famicase Exhibit is an annual event that invites artists globally to participate. Why does “Famicase” sound familiar you might ask? Well have you ever heard of Famicom? Yes? Amazing. This neat gallery pays tribute to Nintendo cartridges reminiscent of Gameboys.
Famicase Exhibit facilitates an opportunity to create fantasy cartridge designs, showcasing art for games that don’t exist! METEOR then goes through and selects their top choices from the contenders and puts them on display. This is where “A Game By Its Cover” Game Jam comes into play.
Housed on itch.io and run by Dom and Ludo (simple monikers that offer little insight into our elusive hosts), AGBIC was created to provide a homestead recognizing the exhibit while stimulating developers to come together and create games inspired by the Famicom designs. The 2023 Jam ran from June 30th to August 13th and received 119 entries in their non-competitive, unranked contest. The hosts offered an optional them “Up and Not Crying” for participants to incorporate into their game design. You can find the entries for the game jam here, and check some out for yourself or you can even look at the old entries for past Famicase Exhibits here.
I was thrilled to come across another indie game jam, as it’s opportunities like this that create community among small developers. Roger Goulart, the lone developer for Ghost Hunter, did a fantastic job in honoring the model cartridge created by artist Gabby DaRienzo — who is the Senior Game artist at Drinkbox Studios.
This retro, top-down game presents rounds of ghostly hauntings as Glenda protects the graveyard. The sound effects are reminiscent of a 70s arcade, evoking childhood nostalgia for many players while providing a fun experience. You navigate getting chased by ghouls from beyond and dispel them by using the environment to your advantage. Some surprise added buffs along the way really enhance the playability and support the gamer, I found, in executing the different rounds within a set time limit. I found the layout to be quite rewarding; find all the pure souls in the graveyard and set them free before time is up!
There’s quite a lot to visually juggle by the third round, which was particularly humbling with the rank based system of achievement rewarded after completing a level. But, the cut scene face pans, and sprinkled narrative text, really make the game feel like a fight scene from Fatal Fury (not in the head-to-head kind of way but the ridiculously charming opponents glaring as each other cut scenes kind of way.) Overall, I was most impressed with the growth of challenges in such a short game. It became how well can you navigate external threats while digging graves, something that spoke really similarly to pac-man dynamics.