Dark Eden (Game Boy Advance)

 You could make a strong case for the lifespans of the Game Boy Advance and DS being the golden age for the search action genre. Six excellent Castlevaniae, two great Metroids, and a bunch of other, lesser known games or varying quality like Monster Tale and Ore ga Omae wo Mamoru were released in this time, and though they were prolific, they didn't yet feel over saturated. Strange, then, that Dark Eden is a proposed search action game that couldn't find a publisher.

 

The ROM that was recently leaked isn't really a full game, but nor is it an unfinished one. Instead, it's kind of a playable pitch, an example in microcosm of what the full game would entail. You play as a guy with a sword, and you're in a very Castlevania-esque castle with a few gardens full of ruins (or possibly follies?). You jump around, kill enemies with your sword, and find upgrades that let you access more areas. There's only four upgrades, and they all give you new abilities that can be done without accessing a menu (which is lucky, as there isn't one). 

 

The upgrades are, in the order that you get them: running (and with it, a running jump that covers more horizontal distance), sliding down/jumping off of walls, a fire elemental upgrade for your sword that increases your damage output and lets you destroy ice walls, and finally, an anti-gravity jump. I was surprised that there was no double jump, that's pretty unusual for a search action game. From start to finish, the game takes less than fifteen minutes to complete, which makes sense, since, as stated earlier, it's just a playable pitch for a possible full game.

 

The pacing, though, is great. It really does feel like a very short longform game, not an excerpt from a full game or one that's been truncated. I was a little disappointed when there was no boss or anything at the end of it, but even so, while the collection of four area-opening upgrades in a full-sized search action game might take place over two or three hours, getting them all in less than a tenth of that doesn't feel like you're being rushed. It just feels kind of natural?

 

It really makes me wonder about the design of search action games. Could someone create one that's longer than this, but which still distills and refines the experience, maybe down to about an hour for a typical playthrough while still retaining the feel of a full experience? And could this idea be extended to other longform genres? It's interesting to think about. Dark Eden is interesting and pretty fun, and it's also short and (kind of) free. So why not play it?