I never got to experience the original Duke Dashington but playing Duke Dashington Remastered shows me that I really missed out on something special. Thankfully, this downright fun adventure gets the remastering treatment so that I can spend my time having more fun than I got from many AAA titles this year.

Duke Dashington Remastered is a puzzle platformer that is about as simple as it gets. It’s like the game was designed for mobile phone (it may have been), but it also shows that a solid puzzle experience works on any platform. All you have to do here is make Duke, well, dash.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”14″]Developer: Adventure Islands

Publisher: Adventure Islands

Style: Puzzle, Platformer

Release: Nov 16th, 2018

[/perfectpullquote]

The arrow keys, or the D-pad if you’re using a controller, force Duke to dash in one of four directions until he hits something and falls. That’s about as involved as the controls get. The real trick comes from the levels themselves. The story has Duke Dashington searching collapsing temples, meaning you are on a tight schedule.

The game gives you ten-seconds to figure out how to make it out of each room you are in. You need to dash around and try to find the exit before that segment of the temple collapses. Again, super easy to grasp, but actually doing this is always a tense experience.

I almost always hate games that pit you against the clock as they often fall into repetition and memorization to get the most out of. Duke Dashington Remastered isn’t that way as the timer manages to always keep you on the edge of your seat. Ten-seconds seems like ages, unless you are trying to work out patterns on the fly.

Duke Dashington Remastered is one of the most exciting puzzle games I’ve played all year because your brain is always working, always firing on all cylinders. Each temple ramps up the difficulty in just the right amount. Early on you’ll simply be dashing around rooms looking for an exit, but soon you’ll be dealing with spikes, then movable blocks, then switches, then moving platforms, then water and on and on.

Each new thing smartly builds on the last until you feel like you’re solving some insane mind-bender, like this is some MENSA try-out. And while you are going to die (probably a lot) it never feels cheap. You learn from every death in how you tackle the challenge at hand and then take that and apply it to whatever comes next.

Duke Dashington Remastered is fantastic because it manages to strike the right balance between risk and reward. Taking a risk may kill you but you’ll learn from it. This process sort of rewires your brain in a very small way so that you’ll begin to see patterns and almost dash about on instinct.

In more than a few rooms later into the game I didn’t even realize how I completed them, my hands and eyes almost on auto pilot. I caught myself asking just how I managed that in an excited tone that filled me with joy. It was as if I was understanding how the game worked on an instinctual level.

I love puzzle games but I don’t think all that many people will say they are very exciting. Tetris is probably the greatest video game ever created, but unless you are one of those Grandmasters you probably never got all that excited playing the game. Duke Dashington Remastered is different as the level of excitement is tied into how well you are doing.

Graphically, Duke Dashington Remastered pulls at my nostalgia heartstrings with its pixel styling. It feels like something pulled right out of the 16-bit generation of gaming consoles. This bright and colorful style works great at setting the mood and keeping things fun. I’m always a fan of games that understand that colors aren’t some taboo thing, strictly relegated to kids games. And it doesn’t hurt that it looks and feels a little bit like the original Wario Land.

Each world is based on a different location and they are all very diverse with a bunch of sub-stages, even though they are all based on the same grid structure. The audio is also really fun and uplifting that helps keep the adventure feeling light and upbeat. It goes a long way when a game has a strong cohesive look and feel. It can really impact how you feel when playing.

Duke Dashington Remastered is a charming game that shows that sometimes less is more. So often, indie games especially, try so hard to throw everything into their game without stopping to think if they should. They often forget that a game should simply be fun over anything else.

And if I didn’t like Duke Dashington Remastered enough, the game is currently on Steam for only $4.99. That’s the perfect price-point for a game like this and totally worth every penny. The only real downside is that the game is pretty short. Sure, your mileage may vary and maybe I’m just good at puzzle games, but I would have liked a longer adventure.

At the end of the day and after having to suffer through some really lackluster indie titles over the past few weeks, getting time with Duke Dashington Remastered has really restored my faith in indie gaming. Snag this one, you won’t be disappointed.

Final Score:

4/5

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