I was reading an article that David is working on (not yet published) and noticed that he had referenced a company known as Ratalaika Games. While I personally do not care much about video game achievements or trophies, I know a lot of you enjoy earning them so I thought I would follow David’s article with a quick look at some of their games I have played. Play these games and you will give a serious boost to your Gamerscore or PlayStation trophy level very quickly. They publish games for the PlayStation Vita, PS4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch so if you are reading this then you can probably play these titles on a system you already own.
Daggerhood – I am a huge fan of retro-inspired titles and that is what attracted me to Ratalaika Games in the first place. Daggerhood certainly qualifies as a title inspired by video games of old but don’t expect this one to play like an SNES or even an NES game. This is more like something you would have played on the venerable Commodore 64 or ColecoVision. You play as a legendary thief known as Daggerhood. You get a brief story aboout Daggerhood being banished into the King’s dungeons and the plucky thief vows to escape.
The gameplay is fairly straightforward. Just make it to the end of each level. If you want the best possible score (not to mention those achievements and trophies), you will need to beat each level within a very brief time limit and collect all of the bonus items. The hardest bonus item to collect in each level is the fairy because she is only visible for a few seconds. The good news is that you do not have to do all of this at once. For example, you could do one run through a level to beat the time limit and then do a replay to get the bonus items.
Peasant Knights – One thing I have noticed about some of the titles from Ratalaika Games is that they often require precise timing. Peasant Knight is no exception. Each level has a time limit of just a few secoonds and you must get to the goal within that time. Once you begin each level, your knight moves automatically but you can stop his progress by hitting left on your D-pad. You must navigate your way through each level by stopping, jumping or even teleporting your way through a variety of obstacles.
Zeroptian Invasion – This one is not a retro-inspired platformer. It is instead a retro-inspired shmup by Ratalaika Games! At first glance you might think this is a clone of Space Invaders and that impression would not be wrong. However, it has other elements such as stage bosses and influences from other classics like Galaxian.
Most of these games can be challenging but they are not difficult, if that makes any sense. You may die a few times until you get the timing for a level downbut most of these games can be beaten within an hour or so. You do not even need to complete most of them to get all of the achievements or that platinum trophy. Best of all, they can be insanely cheap. I have literally seen titles from Ratalaika Games on sale for a dollar or two. If you are looking for something to play that is not a huge time sink, you might want to check out some of these games.
