It's a day of the week that has a Y in it, which means it's time for another explormer for the Indie Game of the Week. This week's big map to navigate is Aggelos, a retro-styled throwback that - like a few others - doesn't so much follow the blueprint of any one game but combines a few together to create something paradoxically familiar but distinct. In this case, Aggelos looks to combine the highlights of the more RPG-ish Wonder Boy in Monster World sub-franchise - there are equipment upgrades, level-ups, and magic to aid your quest - and the frequently underrated Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - the down-stab and up-stab return, the latter also giving you something of a small double jump, and utility magic is required for many traversal puzzles. The story's the usual hokum about a chosen hero saving the world from a mysterious antagonist, though with a big twist at the end that the game foreshadows a few times.

Unlike most explormers, the game has de-emphasized the map feature. You can see whereabouts in the world you are relative to other major locations, but that's about it. No grid-like sequence of boxes and certainly no flags or other icon highlights to tell you where to go or what items you've left behind until you have the right upgrade to reach them. Aggelos's world is small enough that the absence of a more detailed map is hardly a dealbreaker, and it fits with the game's shifted emphasis on skill-based platforming and tricky combat. There's no frills with Aggelos, though I would argue that if all it has are fundamentals then those fundamentals are very polished.

Aggelos lures you in with a false sense of security, letting you overpower yourself early with a few choice equipment upgrades and some easy challenges to overcome, but it starts ratcheting this difficulty up towards the end to the point where backtracking for every heart container or other bonus becomes that much more necessary. You can carry two healing items: the first is a herb, which activates upon death and gives you a little more juice to finish the fight, while the second is a single potion slot that can be upgraded (the elixir, which heals all hearts, is prohibitively expensive unless you're fortunate enough to find a free one in a chest). Save points provide free healing, but they're strategically placed around the map as fast travel points which means they can't be in too many places. The dungeons, for example, don't have any saving points: sometimes it's prudent to hop outside once you've made some progress to save and refresh. I have no issue with the game's difficulty per se - it teaches you to be more patient with the tougher instances of the game, whether that's an overwhelming boss or a room full of spikes to navigate - but the way that difficulty curve suddenly starts Everest-ing was a bit of a surprise: I'd highly recommend going into the game on Normal unless you're some kind of PangaeaPanga type.

Aggelos's magic system deserves to be commended for its versatility. You only ever find four elemental rings, each of which is necessary to complete the dungeons in which they are found. However, as well as a traversal-enabling upgrade, each ring can provide several other benefits useful for combat or getting around. For example, the Air Ring gives you an air dash that breaks through certain barriers and is also handy for crossing large gaps; in addition, this air dash also lets you sprint after its use and will let you pass through enemies unharmed, both of which greatly help when fighting regular mobs and moving around the map quicker. Each ring's use requires mana, but mana regenerates every time you hit an enemy so it's rare you'll ever run out if there's a room full of monsters demanding your attention. You can mix and match the magic you've learned so far - each element requires the magic button plus a direction, so all are simultaneously "active" - along with those aforementioned Zelda II up-stab/downstab combat abilities to string combos together and make the combat that much more varied. I can't say I ever got too bored of fighting through random creatures on the way to my next destination.

It's not all rainbows and sunshine in Aggelos land though, as I kept running into issues while playing its PS4 port. A few revolve around a worrying controller drift issue that I'd not encountered before, and am hoping has not become the new norm for this aging DualShock 4: the D-pad had a tendency to lock on moving right whenever I used it, which I usually do for throwback 2D platformers like this, and whenever I jumped while holding up and left the hero will automatically do his up-stab move, which normally requires hitting the attack button as well. The latter feels like a game glitch (it doesn't occur when jumping with the up and right buttons) but the former could be hardware-related - though I wasn't aware a D-pad could "drift" - so that's perhaps some "your mileage may vary" business. Other issues include the way the music just vanishes in some areas if you jump into your inventory menu and hop back out again, and occasionally when confirming an option in a dialogue box (by hitting the confirm button, X in the PS4's case) it won't actually confirm anything. Minor stuff that I was able to work around, but the drift in particular was noticeable in a game that demands this level of precision. (There's also the usual typos, but I can never tell in throwbacks if a slightly stiff and error-prone localization is meant to be part of the whole old console game nostalgia package.)

Aggelos sits in that odd realm of critique where I can commend it for its overall performance and workmanlike design but not so much for its innovations and presentation, both of which are minimal. If you somehow missed Shovel Knight or Axiom Verge or the throng of Indie platformer throwbacks just like them, Aggelos might show you something you've never seen before, but for the rest of us it's about as standard as they come. Yet its best features are those that aren't trying to be flashy or attention-grabbing: its clever, versatile magic system; its well-considered and surprisingly intense difficulty curve; or its variation-friendly combat and tricky platforming challenges, the hardest of which are optional (there's a cave with a series of traversal challenges that reminded me a lot of the "Ultimate Trial" from SteamWorld Dig 2, for those familiar with it). Bugs aside, there's nothing too objectionable about Aggelos; you just can't help feeling you've maybe seen it all before.

Rating: 4 out of 5.