Amazing Princess Sarah was originally released on Steam back in July of 2014 by developer Haruneko. It follows the story of Demon queen Lilith who has seduced and kidnapped the King of Kaleiya. Princess Sarah embarks on a quest to destroy Lilith’s forces and rescue her father from her grasp.
It is a throwback to the spirit of the original NES era and I was immediately reminded of games like the classic Wizards & Warriors by Rare. An 8-bit platforming style and a level design that is both simple and complicated allows Amazing Princess Sarah to present a nostalgic feel to it. Amazing Princess Sarah draws a lot of its inspiration from games like Wizards & Warriors and Ghosts & Goblins, both of which released for the original NES. Many people use Castlevania as a point of reference due to the popularity of the game, but in this case, Amazing Princess Sarah has many more similarities to Wizards and Ghosts. As a result, it is a platforming action game at its core.
The controls are a dead on accurate throwback to games of its original era. Things like jumping, for example, are immediately evident. If you haven’t played games like Amazing Princess Sarah in a while or simply never have, you will need to take a minute to get used to the jumping. Games nowadays use a momentum based system in jumping. If you jump to the right in current games and take your hand off of the control stick, your character generally continues in the direction of your initial jump due to its momentum. This is the total opposite in Amazing Princess Sarah as there is no momentum. The length of your jump is determined solely by where you take your hand off of the control stick. Where modern day games will see you stop using the control stick slightly before reaching a platform because of your momentum, you will need to stop directly above the platform in Amazing Princess Sarah. It’s a classic technique that many games of its day used, and your timing needs to be slightly adjusted if you’re not older like me and used to things like that.
You are limited to three basic controls in the game; jumping, throwing and stabbing. Princess Sarah is equipped with a little sword which she uses to stab her enemies while jumping through the levels. You also have the ability to pick up various objects and throw them at enemies. These “objects” can be anything from ice blocks, bombs, chairs, armoires, as well as other enemies themselves. Your health meter is measured in the form of a vial and decreases with each hit. Another classic reference to the 8-bit era in Amazing Princess Sarah is what happens after an enemy hits you. Just like Ghosts & Goblins, Princess Sarah gets knocked back when an enemy hits her. For a brief second after being hit, Princess Sarah flashes and is invulnerable for that time.
The enemies that you can throw also provide their own unique types of damage as well. For example, throwing a fire enemy causes a wall of fire damage to strike the impacted enemy. Throwing an archer causes a rain of arrows to drop down and affect enemies in the surrounding area. It’s a nice mechanic and provides a little variety to a platforming genre that has a tendency to get repetitive. As you hit enemies, you’ll want to try and avoid missing strikes. Repetitive attacks increase a multiplier which results in a higher XP count for Princess Sarah. Leveling up offers a two-fold bonus in Amazing Princess Sarah as well. First, each time you level up you earn a small attack boost and a few extra hit points. Second, if you die you start back at the most recent check point but keep the level you obtained. So, if you reach a checkpoint at level 10 but die at level 12, you will start back at the checkpoint at level 12. Not only does this help you level up faster, but it also makes your progress slightly easier. When you respawn at the checkpoint, the enemies return to their same position and are available for you to kill again. In theory, you can hit max level in the first dungeon, but there’s no fun in that. Also, it’s lazy. Don’t do that.
The levels in Amazing Princess Sarah are the definition of basic for the genre and time period of its inspiration. Its setup allows you to focus on attacking enemies, which is key, and also allows for a much smoother pace of gameplay. A mix of both repetitiveness and variety, a staple of the era, is what makes Amazing Princess Sarah interesting. Each level contains the same enemies only in different positions and combinations. Some of the levels are fully enclosed and see you progress along a simple path. Some minor backtracking is present and requires you to open hidden doors, but nothing that blocks your progress. Other levels require you to navigate icy ledges, spike traps or disappearing platforms.
I hate to use the word “bugs” to describe some of the things in Amazing Princess Sarah because I know that is not what they are meant to be. Bugs are design flaws or something that glitches where it shouldn’t be. The things in Amazing Princess Sarah, like enemy collision detection, are deliberate. It’s added into the game to force you to play differently than what you are used to with today’s games. Just like how games evolved to what they are now from the era Amazing Princess Sarah is based on, this release brings you back full circle. So, although you may not be used to it and have to get used to its setup, it’s the design of the game rather than a bug. A good example of this comes in boss fights. You will need to experiment with bosses as you never know where they are going to step or where their strike is going to land. Timing is key as your decision will result in Princess Sarah being in perfect position for a strike, not struck but too far away to attack, or simply squashed by the boss. This may be a bit frustrating for people unfamiliar with games of its era, but in no way is it a bug.
After you beat the game it opens up a few bonus modes as well. These let you play through the game again with various different effects on each level. One of the modes is a drunk mode where the levels shake and wobble, making it more difficult to navigate as a result. The funniest thing I found in Princess Sarah is one of the achievements. In drunk mode, you get an achievement for “slapping a fatty” while drunk. Now, a fatty is a specific type of enemy, but the name is still hysterical. Other modes see you play as a vampire and even a “ghost mode” where you are chased by your own ghost.
Amazing Princess Sarah also offers incredible music and a pixelated art design accompanied by its own added polish. Fast paced guitar solos and slower ballads all accompany the game in their respective areas. More action type sequences see faster music while the slower, more explorative modes provide more soothing audio. Boss fights focus on the bosses themselves, as their design is more 3D oriented compared to the pixelated version of Princess Sarah herself. I found this interesting as it’s not only uncommon in games of its genre, but it actually flows incredibly well. Many times when you combine different types of graphical setup in one level it can be visually confusing. Amazing Princess Sarah pulled it off quite well though, to be honest.
Even though the game only has several levels, it avoids being repetitive and provides a steady flow the entire time. Amazing Princess Sarah is a simple platforming action game from the 8-bit era with a unique, modern day twist. Developer Haruneko stays true to form at the core and doesn’t change the game for the sake of change. Amazing Princess Sarah matures as a game where it needs to in order to embrace modern day audiences, yet keeps the retro feel to it which classic gamers like myself fell in love with. Aesthetic and tangible changes make for an evolving game, which is quite unusual for games of its type.
The best thing about Amazing Princess Sarah is its main enemy; You. You are your own main competition. There is no fluff or added nonsense to Amazing Princess Sarah in order to distract you from inherent flaws. The game embraces its era, throws it all at you and sets up a “You vs. the world” design that really needs to be appreciated. Like many classic, retro games, Amazing Princess Sarah focuses not on the distracting add on features, but the overall integrity of the basic gameplay itself.
Summary
Amazing Princess Sarah is well worth the price of $6.49 if you are fans of classics like Ghosts & Goblins and Wizards & Warriors. If you haven’t played these games or ones similar to it yet, Amazing Princess Sarah does a brilliant job of embracing the genre at its core while not alienating fans with the modern day improvements that newcomers will enjoy.
M.W.B. contributed 27 articles to ICXM between 2015–2016, covering game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push.