It's been almost two weeks since the last one, so here's another explormer review for you to closely examine top to bottom for secrets. (Here's one: I probably play too many of these games.) This time around we're taking a look at Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials from last year (2020), which is already scoring points for its pointlessly elaborate subtitle. It's also a rare explormer/RPG hybrid, and rarer still one that isn't based on the Souls formula to any significant extent. I've only played one other game with those criteria before - UnEpic from Francisco Téllez de Meneses - and there's a few similarities between its mix of fantasy tropes, sarcastic humor, and a zoomed out perspective that allows for a lot of detailed environments filled with hidden surprises.

The protagonist of Batbarian is a barbarian who has a bat for a partner, so it's anyone's guess why they named the game that. As well as being generally cute, the bat is luminous and most of the dungeon is dark so she also acts as a handy self-carrying lantern. While she cannot be controlled directly the player can manipulate the bat's behavior somewhat by throwing out food for her to eat, which can allow her to activate crystal buttons or stun enemies with her radiance. This bat utility expands more as the game continues and the player finds more varieties of food to feed her, in a fashion similar to the game's other explormer-common traversal upgrades. The player can also throw other items such as rocks, useful for activating switches in remote places: as you might expect, this throwing system uses an analog stick for aiming and gives you some idea of the trajectory with a dotted line. It's a bit finicky in boss fights or other timing-intensive scenarios, but there's enough ingenious environmental puzzles that make use of it to justify its inclusion as a mechanic. In fact, on the whole Batbarian is a very cleverly-designed game - something it almost takes pains to hide with its silly jokes about barbarians that yell a lot and hate to read. The classic LucasFilm graphic adventure appears to be a big influence, as you'll occasionally converse with NPCs in the form of branching dialogue prompts which are the chief source of the game's humor.

As an explormer/RPG hybrid, you have a specific goal - escape the labyrinthine cave system you fell into after an unfortunate encounter with some ogres - but plenty of opportunities to earn XP and acquire loot. Secret areas confer XP bonuses and goodies alike, making them highly sought-after, and there's a currency system needed to buy goods at a store run by a myconid that lets you restock rarer thrown items or buy new upgrades. The game has plenty of the latter to be found in addition to gold and item refills: you have three main stats that you can increase every level (the game even lets you min-max one over the others, if you wish, with an oddly superfluous roulette level-up feature) and you can find permanent boosts to all three in the form of potions, in addition to the much rarer permanent health increases. The rarest collectibles are the "pure gems": you'll need to find the right NPC to trade them to, but they're also a source of some permanent upgrades. You also have the customary aforementioned traversal upgrades that unlock more of the dungeon to visit, the first big one of which unlocks a much appreciated and immediately helpful fast travel system between bonfires (the saving/restoration points). Other appreciated quality of life features include custom map markers: the player can drop one of around ten different icons on any given map square provided it doesn't already contain a bonfire or the merchant (since they have their own icons). It's a useful tool for delineating if a spot has an out-the-way chest or an exit that's currently inaccessible, more so if they're in enclosed parts of the screen that require you enter them from a different direction (there are directional icons that help with that too). Bosses are tough but also well telegraphed with a Mega Man-style sliding door interstitial screen, so you can always plonk a skull icon there and come back later when you feel a little more confident about your current status.

Presentation-wise, Batbarian's zoomed-out perspective allows for some deeply-detailed pixel artwork for its cavernous environments and the low-lighting helps to establish the grim and desolate mood of the setting, only occasionally alleviated by the levity in the script. The dynamic lighting is paramount to many of the game's mechanics so it's no surprise that a lot of care was lavished on its implementation here, providing its sprites with different levels of luminosity and various hues. It's not too dissimilar to how Noita looks at any given moment, if not quite as chaotic. The titular bat, Pip, provides the most consistent source of illumination but there's also wall torches, campfires, and fireball projectiles for other bursts of vivid light, and the more subtle radiance from bioluminescent enemies and background fungi are usually enough to give you some idea of the rest of the current screen's topography and its potential hidden areas. The music's been pretty great so far too, composed by Will Savino and Derris-Kharlan (bonus points for that name too), and provides a germane synth-y Dungeons & Dragons score to the adventure.

I'm slowly making my way through what is promising to be a much larger game than I anticipated. My (and everyone's) usual source for this kind of information, HowLongToBeat, posits Batbarian as having a 20-hour runtime which sounds about right for a game that's half explormer and half RPG. I'm presently lost in a venomous maze of mesmerizing carnivorous plants - very "lotus-eaters" in here, as I've already been tricked once with an illusory treasure vault - but I'm appreciating how different each of the game's regions feel: the prior region was evidently an ancient ocean bed that had long been drained of water, filled with elemental spirits that you often needed to pit against each other to solve puzzles. On the whole I've definitely been enjoying Batbarian's mix of tricky puzzles, hectic combat, and mordant sassmouth, and am invested enough to see the game through to its end even if all its fancy luminosity tech is enough to drag down the framerate in spots (though it's very much a "me and my potato PC" problem, I suspect).

(NB: Worth also noting that the game was free with the Itch.io Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid that came out last summer, so feel free to give it a trial run if you bought that bundle.)

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)