Download Lychnis

Lychnis is one of the true hidden gems of gaming -- produced by the Korean company Softmax, in cooperation with the indie development team Artcraft. The developers of this game would go on to create some of the most famous Korean games, including Ragnarok Online, Granado Espada and the Magna Carta series. The music is done by Sound Team TeMP, whose work you may have heard in the PangYa / Super Swing Golf games, as well as in the aforementioned titles.

Lychnis was their first game, and it's one hell of a debut. While it wasn't anything near state-of-the-art with its simple graphics, tiny sprites and occasional slowdowns, it excelled in two areas the IBM-PC wasn't exactly famous for: ultra-smooth scrolling and spot-on controls.

The game begins with a choice of characters. While the knight Lychnis fights with a sword and can jump off walls, the sorceress Iris attacks enemies with her wand and has the ability to perform a magical double jump. Both run through double-tapping the directional keys. While the differences seem subtle at first, their abilities make for very distinct playing styles - and there are even some bonus areas that can only be reached by one of the characters.

The stages are mostly straightforward, and follow well-known platformer templates, but they're rarely as cleverly designed as in Lychnis: always challenging but never unfair, although there are three self-scrolling levels which can become quite frustrating, especially as the number of credits given to continue the game is limited, and there is neither a password system nor a save function.

After each stage the players can visit an item shop, but only if they picked up the store sign beforehand. Here, upgrades for both your weapon (to extend its range) and armor (which increases health points) can be acquired, and the latter in particular soon becomes a necessity. Be careful: slain enemies drop gold and healing herbs, but a thief hides in some treasure chests, and will take away half your money when he touches you.

While its levels are some of the best in the genre (save for the last one), Lychnis has almost no boss fights. Only at the very end do you get to fight a robed black wizard, but it's easily the worst boss fight in gaming history: a mix between a slot machine and a turn-based RPG fight, it requires nothing but incredible luck and much upgraded health to succeed. Whoever thought that this would have a place in this otherwise great game deserves to be stripped of his game developer's license.