La-Mulana

La-Mulana
80
Metacritic
80
Steam
83.607
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$4.94
Release date
15 April 2013
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
80 (1 794 votes)
Recent
63 (11 votes)

LA-MULANA is an “Archaeological Ruin Exploration Action Game,” bringing the classic appeal of adventure with the punishing difficulty of retro-inspired gaming. Search inside ancient ruins, seeking out the “Secret Treasure of Life” – which sleeps in the sprawling ruins of “LA-MULANA” and is said to be the beginning of all civilization.

Show detailed description

La-Mulana system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS:Windows XP
  • Processor:Intel® Pentium 4 / 2.0GHz
  • Memory:1 GB RAM
  • Graphics:DirectX 9.0c compatible card, 128MB of VRAM
  • DirectX®:9.0c
  • Hard Drive:500 MB HD space
  • Sound:DirectX 9.0c compatible card

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
Similar games
SAOMI
SAOMI

Action, Adventure, Indie

xDr: 64.50
Popularity
Reviews
Write a new review
Fairy Haruka
Fairy Haruka

Brainbusting, doesn't need anything fancy to make you think outside the box until you catch up on how it works, rage inducing too and there's many ways of advancing in the game, sequence is very open!

Avasam
Avasam

Can be a fun metroidvania on the surface, but there are way too many frustrating elements. Tons of insta-death traps with no tell, lava pits that do everything to keep you in, enemy placements designed to make you fall and loose as much time as possible, progression locked behind extremely obscure hidden passages. You can even permanently lock yourself out of one of the best weapon upgrades!!!

The jumping mechanic is a bit janky, but you can get used to it. This remaster added new keybinds for easier weapon switching, but overall it still has that unpolished NES game feel.

RockyV
RockyV

Don't understand the praise behind this series.

Controls feel like a struggle, map looks awful and the pixels display horribly.

Only good thing is the music.

What's worse is this game is supposed to be around 40-60 hours.

Seriously?

I could never sit through a full game that long with these kind of drawbacks.

PurpleXVI
PurpleXVI

When your platformer controls worse than Commander Keen, there have been some dire mistakes made somewhere. It has the worst jumping I've ever experienced in a platformer that wasn't a mid-00's Newgrounds flash game. Controls feel universally unresponsive and sluggish, air control is non-existent and arbitrary depending on whether it's a jump, fall or standing jump.

I strongly wondered whether it was just me and I would grow to like it, but reading some of the other negative reviews, it looks like this is also the sort of game you have to play with a guide not to literally dead-man-walking yourself or lock yourself out of strong upgrades.

That sort of game design can go right to hell.

DragonElderX9
DragonElderX9

I really wanted to like this game, truly. But alas, the god awful jumping mechanic and shitty hitboxes prevent me from enjoying the good aspects. The music is great and the theme is super neat. Also a more minor thing,
half of the achievements are just ridiculous and/or missable.

sugar honey ice tea
sugar honey ice tea

I love this game. If you are gonna pick it up, play without any help. It will take 260 hours but it's damn worth it. Maybe stream it if you want :D

Grain.Wizard
Grain.Wizard

This game made me realize that I was not the big smart boy that I thought I was, and it put me under heavy mental stress, leading me into a deep depression. However it is a very good game overall.

TheCyberDuck
TheCyberDuck

If you enjoy a mix of fun difficult boss fights and puzzles that require you to think like a conspiracy theorist then boy is this the game for you.

greenraven22
greenraven22

Hardcore platformer with an emphasis on oldskool gaming. I really want to recommend this game but unfortunately I can't because you can only play this with arrow keys. So if you happen to be a WASD player you're going to have a bad time. I've lost count of how many times I accidentally attacked instead of jumping and vice versa. And in a game like this precision timing matters.

As long as I'm already complaining might as well add in a few of the minor nitpicks and gripes. This game is trying to go for a retro feel but unfortunately it's choosing to emulate some of the worst qualities of older games. No one wants to relive Castlevania's janky jump mechanics and ludicrous knockback.

And then we come to the progression problem. It's one thing when a game wants you to solve a really hard puzzle but half the time this game doesn't even tell you what the puzzle is. Most of the time it just comes down to sheer dumb luck and you accidentally stumbling into the right sequence of events of unlocking the right item in the right room at the right time of day with the right attack.

Hope you enjoy backtracking to the same room x10 times looking for the one tiny pixel you missed to progress because the game will be zero help in that department. This game is made for a very niche audience of masochists.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2489061874

Kentucky
Kentucky

this game is amazing. actually unlike anything i've ever played before. it is possibly one of the hardest, most unfair, most unforgiving games i've ever played, but it really just is a masterpiece in and of itself.

Subscriber
Subscriber

Incredible game that absolutely falls apart in the last quarter, and a few times before that. Don't get me wrong, there's still great moments in the last part of the game, but it's mired in puzzles that are not merely obtuse, but set up in a way that they are designed to waste the time of anybody who hasn't kept a detailed Excel spreadsheet of all the tablets, what areas they came from, and what areas and puzzles they refer to.

Not only that, but the game relies heavily on event triggers that are not at all clear. Sometimes, you do a thing, and it opens up another area for seemingly no reason. Perhaps some of these are indicated in the clues, but most of the time, you are forced to just try everything until you realize that something happened *for some reason*. Because many of the clues to the puzzles are so obtuse, it encourages the player to just try anything, using every item in every place possible. Often, this works. It is not fun. Encouraging the player to brute force puzzles because you scattered the clues across the sprawling lands of La-Mulana was a poor choice. I get why the game is this way. It's obviously the result of many years of work, which led to it being disordered, following the confusing logic of devs who were too close to the game for too long.

The boss design also falls apart at the end, with the last few bosses suffering from the same kinds of problems. The contact damage hit boxes are awful and annoying. The patterns the bosses run actively avoid the player -- the hardest part is figuring out when and how you can attack them without taking damage, and this involves waiting for the predictable patterns to play out, or face-tanking the bosses with full health. Most of the time, you will end up face-tanking them. I hope you like double jumping and swinging twice, that's pretty much all you do for the last few bosses. The first few bosses were fair, and didn't constantly evade the player's weapons. The last few bosses are exercises in frustration, not because they're difficult, but because they're boring and artificially difficult.

But despite all that, I think this game is genius-level stuff. It is absolutely in my top 5 games of all time, for the sheer creativity and audacity of it. The story is intriguing, the lore has incredible depth to it. La-Mulana has top-tier world-building. I love the mythos of Mother, and how it incorporates a huge variety of mystic and religious influences. Most of the puzzles are fun and are very clever, when they don't waste your time. *Most* of the bosses are fun, even if the boss design has been obviously outdone in many other modern Metroidvanias. The Holy Grail is a great quality of life measure that I wish other games in the genre had. The world is sprawling in a mystifying way. I've focused on the negatives, but the things that work are truly special. When I think about this game, yes, the frustrations and obtuseness are there, but mostly I think about it's sprawling, audacious design, and bizarre, compelling lore. Those things transcend its failures.

So, I really recommend this game. It's just a shame that I spent the last quarter of the game consulting a guide (which honestly was still difficult due to the open-ended nature of the game), being confused, wandering around aimlessly, and frustrated by artificially difficult bosses with bad hit boxes and bad telegraphing.

Looking forward to playing the sequel, which I hope fixes many of my issues. I think this game is worth a look from anyone who's looking for something different, because it truly is unlike any other game.

MadMark255
MadMark255

The Adventure of a Lifetime

The Gist: In the single greatest Metroidvania game ever crafted by mortal hands, Professor Lemeza Kosugi must uncover the secrets of the ruins of La-Mulana.

The Good:
-The music is excellent, iconic even
-The variety of environments is incredible
-The graphics, for a game more-or-less meant to emulate 16 bits, are great
-The humor is pretty good
-The story is actually rather compelling

The Bad:
-None. I cannot, in good conscience, say anything negative about this game.

Tip: You might want to use a walkthrough, or at least read the manual.

ANNOYING CROW
ANNOYING CROW

WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE SECRET CULT LIKE PRAISE FOR THIS GAME

BUT THAT'S YOU ASKING ME WHY I LIKE PREGGO AMPUTEE FEMBOYS

Arcade
Arcade

Game is good.
Puzzles are good.

Natendo
Natendo

One of the best Metroidvania games of all time

Foofles
Foofles

It's a well made game. And it punishes you as a player for ... everything. It is clunky as all hell and generally just not fun. I love hard games. Adore them. This ... is bad game design.

Ritz
Ritz

Absurdly difficult game. Only recommended for fans of metroidvanias and puzzles.

🅱ilL.i.aM
🅱ilL.i.aM

The first few hours of this game are great. It rapidly falls off a cliff. By the end, you will be saying "how the FUCK would anyone figure this out?" every ten minutes while you consult a guide.

I'm pretty sure only like five people have legitimately completed this game without referring to the wiki or a guide. 5% of people who buy it actually finish it according to the Steam Achievements. Incredible, and not in a good way.

amie
amie

Get hit once and lose all your progress as you're knocked back 1000m down the tower you were just climbing. Many bosses are impossible to hit without getting hit yourself, meaning you need to be perfect at the clunky controls to avoid their projectiles. The puzzle solving is fun, although the bad translations and overly cryptic clues will make it frustrating to those not willing to grab a pen and paper.

Rashkavar
Rashkavar

Do you like Metroidvanias? Puzzles that will stump a veteran Myst player? Games that are unforgiving and occasionally just plain sadistic? Then La Mulana is for you. It's genuinely an excellent game, but you need to be able to accept all of these things - it's definitely not for everyone!

quinn
quinn

this is the best game ever made

Pastapockets
Pastapockets

The best Metroidvania of all time. Accept no substitutes. Because it has all the others beat in the most important respect: exploration.

ZettaVolt
ZettaVolt

I wish I could play this game for the first time again.

VERY fun game

trickyblackjack
trickyblackjack

I'm late into my second attempt and I just can't recommend this game. It's really just a series of a lot of bad puzzles and the worse bosses in video games. Hopefully the sequel improves on some of these things....

Agagus
Agagus

The devs hate you: the game

Get it, though. It's great if you like to be stuck for hours at a time looking for the next way to progress. I'm unironically recommending it.

Adam
Adam

No you know what no fuck the praise
It's not the silent hill of metroidvania
is the cock and ball torture from wikipedia, the free encyclopedia of metroidvanias
holy crap the amount of mental gymnastics required to make it to the end of this game automatically qualifies me for the olympics. I'm at the final boss and it's an absolute COW

It's still a REALLY enjoyable game but good GOD does it make me feel really smart and then crush my nads beneath its heel, and god help me if im not starting to enjoy the last bit

I beat the final boss then accidentally softlocked myself, so had to beat her again! 10/10 would instantly recommend, also already playing the sequel

ole bats
ole bats

La Mulana is a Very old game, based off of other very old games. This is a port of that very old game. The original version was released in 2005, originally only in japan, and translated into english by AGTP. All this is to say that, for better or for worse, largely coming down to your personal preference, this game has some unforgiving design decisions.

The jumping physics are reminiscent of a slightly more forgiving castlevania, and the knockback is brutal, almost feeling specifically designed to spite you. You will jump into new screens, instantly get knocked back by an, at the time unseen, enemy, and forced to climb back up. Sometimes you will fall several screens. At times, if your dodging is bad, this game resembles something closer to jump king then a metroidvania.

I stress most of the enemies are predictable, and as long as you move and attack with purpose you generally don't need to worry about it, but it's very easy to lose the majority of your platforming progress over a single misstep. This isn't a bad part of the game In My Opinion, but it is something that may turn you off.

Beyond this, the combat is standard platformer fare, with weapons being used to attack enemies, weapons having different hit zones and attack rates and damage values and so on and so forth. Some bosses are very finnicky about letting you actually hit them without taking a hit in return, but again, with good positioning this is generally not an issue, and it's a part of how the difficulty of the game is designed. In many fights you will take the majority of your damage from flying into enemy hitboxes rather then any sort of actual attack, and I have to admit this feels pretty silly, but there's almost a skill in launching yourself past enemies and doing damage at the same time without injuring yourself, so again, YMMV.

So, so far we've established this metroidvania as a fairly clunky platformer with a fairly clunky combat system that has... less then broad appeal, I think it's fair to say. So what's left? The puzzles, naturally! La mulana sports some of the most in depth puzzle work in video games that I've seen in recent memory. You will need to take notes (the game provides you with a way to save notes in game by the way! It's very useful! Use it!), you will need to learn in game lingo, you will need to cross reference map coordinates across multiple zones to finish this game. This game expects you to know where certain areas in the game are in context to other areas of the game. This game expects you to keep track of random facts and errata scattered throughout it. You will solve obtuse puzzles that show no outside sign of being a puzzle other then a chest being in the same room as it, based off of tablets you read several screens, and sometimes zones, away. You'll collate notes across multiple tablets to form a large body of knowledge you use to solve larger puzzles. You'll do... a lot, based entirely off of random knowledge you gain from NPC chatter and esoteric tablet statements that are not always up front and clear about what they're saying.

If that sounds good to you? La Mulana may be the only place to get it, combat system and fairly messy platforming aside. But be sure you can deal with those downsides! Again, I eventually started to like the platforming, and I think as long as you take things slow, the combat is fairly simple outside of boss fights. But your mileage may vary.

|VIP| Spectre
|VIP| Spectre

You don't need an archaeology degree to play this game, but it'll probably help.

Pneuma
Pneuma

best cock-and-ball torture i've ever experienced

HoneyHive
HoneyHive

La-Mulana has easily become one of my favorite games of all time.

The more I think about this game, the more it pulls me in, making me want more and more. It's delightfully devilish approach to game design is a curve-ball to most games that you'd expect, dropping you into the game and saying "Good luck!" with barely any help at all. You'll literally have to read the manual to even have some direction in the beginning. I think that is brilliant. In recent years I've found myself turned off (for lack of a better term) by games that hold your hand to varying degrees, and this one not even giving a damn about your time with this game is refreshing. VERY, refreshing.

In my first play through, I had many frustrations with some of the later parts of the game, being far too obtuse, and looking at the wiki for help. I very much regret doing so, as the parts i figured out naturally were some of the most rewarding gameplay I've ever had in any game ever. If you play this game, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use "Cheshire's hint-based guide to La-Mulana" instead of a wiki.

This game is a 10/10. No contest. Even when you replay it, and know all the puzzles, its a fantastic game. I strongly recommenced everyone to at least try this game, its fantastic. And if this review has swayed you into thinking of playing this game, I'll tell you what the steam page also tells you.

Good luck, you'll need it.

Trusty
Trusty

I absolutely adore this Metroidvania puzzler. The music is great and I really dig the aesthetic. The platforming generally feels good, and for the most part, exploring and solving puzzles feels extremely satisfying. The boss fights aren't all great but at least most of them are interesting conceptually and look cool. That all said, I spent a very good chunk of my playtime bashing my head into the wall. Some of the solutions are absolutely arcane. As far as I know, the one puzzle required me to refer to the instruction manual which is both poorly translated and not included (though I brute forced that one.) I loved it but I'm pretty sure everyone I know would hate it. Take that as you will.

cpyap
cpyap

Biggest piece of junk I've ever purchase.
If you just got it, GET A REFUND!
This game is basically a combination of everything negative a game can have.
1) Terrible control
The control is just outright terrible. You can read on other's feedback about how bad it is. I've seen game getting massive thumb down for terrible jump, but compare to this, those game are really good. In this game, all control are clunky, keys sometime don't do what they are supposed to do, and you have to get massively lucky if you want everything to happen just right.

2) Full of bugs
a) For example, you could randomly walking then suddenly "sink" into the block, and then get warped to a random location (usually starting location), with your character transparent and can't do anything. I'm not talking about the traps here. It's the actual bug that randomly happen, and combine with how difficult some part are, this bug will basically get you to totally mess up and have to reset and redo those platforming (with clunky control).
b) When you hit the boss, you will need to pray that you're lucky, cause the exact same action, sometime it hit, sometime it just doesn't. It's like a 50-50 chance that it will just be like "oh no, it doesn't work". And no, I have checked the guide online to make sure that I'm not hitting when the boss is invulnerable.

3) Bad programming:
a) The clunky control is definitely caused by the bad programming, but worse:
b) Sometime the boss will be like: F it all, and so the boss will then spam the exact same attack, which happen to be the one that you can't hit it. In short: The boss spam the same attack until you're dead while you can't even hit it.

4) Toxic community
Basically if you say anything, the community will be like: "You s**ks so you fail", disregard what you're saying. Report the "sink into tile" bug? Must you because you failed.

5) Everything bad masqueraded as "feature".
Yup, everything bad mentioned above, has now been called a "feature". Just because.

Rasmus
Rasmus

Absolutely incredible game, nothing exists like it.

If you enjoy bashing your head against a wall for 40-50 hours then this sure is the game for you.
The setup is this: You venture into the ruins and find tablets containing very cryptic information. This is probably use to solve SOME puzzle SOMEWHERE in the game. Good luck!

You will get stuck. For hours. The game has several bullshit moments, and a couple of things that feel like moonlogic if you don't find the right tablet. I would higly reccomend the hint-based guide made by Cheshire (found in the steam community) if you get so stuck that you are frustrated. Otherwise, wander around, check a few tablets out and see if anything comes to mind.

There truly is no game like La-Mulana.

Anonymous
Anonymous

TLDR:
The game has intrigue, decent music, and nice visuals, but player controls are deliberately designed to work against you.

Unstructured Review:
First the good:
The visuals for the remake are quite nice, and frankly look like a 2D Castlevania game of that era.

Mixed:
I found most of the synth style music to be a bit jarring to listen to, but some tracks were decent, while others were forgettable.

Now the bad:

Regarding the controls, the jump mechanic feels unresponsive, and rarely do you feel like you are in control of where you land. Other games have done this before, like Castlevania an Journey to Silius, but I found that you had better control of the distance you would jump, and the over all arc was far more consistent in those games. In this game, sometimes the jump would be too high, or too far when I would try to cover a small gap, and it just came off as very unpredictable as a result.

There were also issues with inconsistent enemy HP, where in one room an enemy type could be defeated in one hit, and in another room, that same enemy type could take up to 6 hits before going down.

Another issue, is that this game suffers from cheap enemy placement, where some enemies are right next to a save point. Sometimes it is not a big issue, but if the enemy is a quick and durable, then it becomes an annoying problem.

Lastly, some environment hazards are generated in a completely random manner. like in the lava stage where rocks of hardened magma shoot from the pools of lava. In this situation, you may find you have wait a considerable amount of time before being able to proceed. In other cases, you may get caught in a damage loop and just have to try again. It's just too inconsistent.

In terms of final thoughts, I could forgive pretty much all the above issues if the character controls were more modern like the visuals. There are better games than this out there, so I say skip it unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Mord
Mord

If you'r friend says he needs a game to play, tell them about the wonderful and a absolutely fair game called La-Mulana.kekw

A-okay
A-okay

great metroidvania. keep a notebook.

ExtremeEnigma619
ExtremeEnigma619

great and fun, just rember to stop pllaying when u start to get mad.

KING DADDLE DINGO
KING DADDLE DINGO

Give It a Chance! Until it's too much to handle.

Pull out the pen and paper, take notes and make your own maps, completing the first couple area's yourself will be the most novel metroidvania in years. Eventually the riddles will get to obtuse, when you can't take it anymore drive in spoilers mad to hints and maps, even then it will take ages to sort out the crazy connections and puzzles this game has on offer.

Voot Lejin
Voot Lejin

This is so hard, but really, but hard, but rewarding. Probably worth it keep a guide around.

moneyisflesh
moneyisflesh

I don't get the complaints this is one of the best games I've ever played. Brutal and full of challenges.

Echopixel
Echopixel

Hard and satisfying puzzles, platforming and metroidvania aspects combine to make one of my favorite games. Play this shit, you're missing out.

FatCatInc.
FatCatInc.

My favorite game!

La Mulana is an absolutely sublime experience unlike any other- if you like what it does.

The game is a unique mix of the action and 2d exploration of a metroidvania combined with the cryptic but fair puzzles of games like Myst and Riven. La Mulana is monolithic in size, scope, and challenge. You'll be writing down/screenshotting texts, studying the game like a college course, and thinking like a conspiracy theorist to solve all the mysteries without help.
In the end, its first and foremost a puzzle game so looking up the answers can ruin the fun of it- I for one really regret spoiling a few puzzles.

A common complaint is that the puzzles are unfair and the game is impossible to complete without a guide, but that's not true- every puzzle has a hint (maybe excepting the optional postgame challenge area). The later puzzles do become very hard though and most people don't beat it without any extra help.

I would highly recommend it (and La Mulana 2- its just as good) to anyone who likes a meaty experience. The soundtrack is unbelievably good too!!

LittleLuigi73
LittleLuigi73

The Game is Good, just don't know how to FUCKING BEAT IT!

MUREX
MUREX

Not a game for me. The character movement isn't fluid at all, and the game is difficult. You can fall from tremendous height and not die, but you die in water after a few seconds. One area just zaps you when you attack for some reason, and the fricking birds suck. This is not a casual game at all, and I'm guessing it takes a lot of focus to play.....and that's not my cup of tea. There are so many weapons to get, but you get coins way too slowly to buy anything. This game is painful to play, but I guess some people like that. This is a warning to people thinking this is a casual metroidvania/platformer game.

lintilion
lintilion

made by the devil to trick me. This game has a unique flavour I can appreciate, it feels less like a game and more like I am passing through trials of the dead to reach the afterlife

azuarc
azuarc

Game is an incomprehensible mess the likes of which I haven't seen since the days of the Commodore 64. I thought, this must be the kind of game that shoves all the information into the manual...and then I realized there was a manual, and it was written in broken English and didn't really help with my problems. I'm seeing now that the second trailer in the store is a tutorial, but it's too late. I've already moved on.

DanilOcelot
DanilOcelot

another famous game that it just didn't click with me

Marcade
Marcade

It's La-Mulana, what more needs be said?

...ok, if you like metroidvanias, you'll like it. If you like games that are hard but fair, you'll like it. If you like middle aged archeologists in swimsuits, beat Hell Temple and you'll love it.

Soldancer
Soldancer

Probably the hardest and most satisfying game I have ever played. The actual gameplay is tough as nails, but largely fair - though do be warned there are some poorly telegraphed "gotcha" moments that will make you want to throw your controller.

However, the real place where the game shines is in its crazy puzzles. There's definitely going to be moments where every player gets stuck, but at least we are in the age of walkthroughs. The interesting thing is that every player will get stuck in a different place, with some puzzles seeming to be very easy and some maliciously hard.

If you approach the game methodically, then I think you will have a good time. Keep a Notepad app open for notes, and make liberal use of F12 for screenshots of notable locations. If I can make it through this, so can you!

kirby
kirby

good game, play it, highly recommend

Admiral Orange
Admiral Orange

Seriously I spent 5 minutes in the first screen trying to get out of a conversation, eventually finding out left trigger backed me out. The next conversation was a loop by a merchant of I didn't have enough money. After about 300 button presses it let me out of this menu. I no longer care to even try the game.

Uranai Zenny
Uranai Zenny

La-Mulana only pretends to like you. The question for you then; do you like it enough to deal with its BS?

If so, welcome to your doom.

BlueSolution
BlueSolution

11/10 came back nearly 10 years later to play it again and it still holds up.

Don't even wait for a sale just buy it

You will gain the strength to take all the shopping in in one go
You will gain the skill to swim without floaties
You will gain the wisdom to tell your missus she looks great in that dress when she doesn't

git gud

Touch Fluffy Tail
Touch Fluffy Tail

Started off strong but some of the enemy placements and hitboxes are so dogshit that it really takes away from the enjoyment.

Zealous Man
Zealous Man

Word of Advice: Take out a notepad for this game. You're gonna need it.
This game is designed for people who thoroughly enjoyed games like Castlevania 2 and Maze of Galious. the puzzles are insanely obtuse and the platforming is almost impossible with it's awkward jump physics. While I enjoyed this game for what it was, others will not so take heed before buying this. There's a reason why only 5.1% of the total people who bought this game managed to finish it.

Vaizzes_Nightmare
Vaizzes_Nightmare

Easily became one of my favorite games upon completion! (After Hell Temple). The game difficulty is brutal., the puzzles will have you thinking, the music is amazing, the traps will get you, and more! Tough games like La-Mulana that force me to Git Gud always have a spot in my heart. I very much enjoy tough games. At the end of the game after hours and hours of frustration, I will leave feeling satisfied and accomplished.

Doommsatic
Doommsatic

i want to kill everyone that has suggested this game to me. I will slit their throats in their sleep and murder them. I will kill them, kill them, kill them and kill them.

10/10 amazing game about beating your mom up

2Dollarbill
2Dollarbill

It's a game that broke a bunch of bad habits I was doing for games, mostly just looking up what to do when I get stuck instead of sticking through and trying to figure out what I'm doing.

This game is also frustrating as fuck and the Gate of Illusion can unironically suck my fucking dick.

Edit: I have found true evil and it hates me. Fuck you Hell Temple.

patoch
patoch

Are you old enough to know Preliminary Monty or Pitfall 2? If you enjoyed any of these two back in the days... La-Mulana is mandatory buy :)
Game is great! Hard at the beginnig, with clever puzzles, sometimes frustrating, but very rewarding for patient gamers.
Nice looking (for pixel-art lovers). And this old-school climate... not many titles has this specific vibe these days.

frogmoss10
frogmoss10

What more needs to be said?
If you've found your way here you know already what the deal is with this game.
Is stupid hard in many aspects.
But I enjoy it nonetheless.

ur Game Buddy
ur Game Buddy

This game takes you back to the times of first computer games where raw skill and tenacity were needed to reach the end of a beloved game without dying as there were no saves, reach the final boss and pray to Gamer gods not to die at this critical moment. If this sort of a challenge appeals to you, by all means, get this game and spend hours peeling the secrets of La Mulana. Otherwise, you buy a game that will make you cuss a lot and probably give up halfway with frustration. I had to start relying on a walkthrough, although I really am in awe how complex of a game Nigoro guys have created. I just don;t have enough free time to enjoy it as it was intended to. You have been warned :-D

Sky
Sky

This is a hard one to say NO to, but seeing as the only options are YES or NO... I have to pick no, I think.

I don't honestly think I could recommend this game to most people. Not even ME people.

I think this game is honestly really cool and absolutely has a nostalgic charm, but the puzzles are SO obscure and SO frustrating and tedious that I don't think most people will like them. This game is like a single-player ARG. It emulates the old NES Zelda experience of being just EXTREMELY cryptic.

I think to some, this would be good! If you like that kind of thing, this is probably one of the best games out there for you! But I think most people would prefer the game be at least a LITTLE more accessible.

Anyway, if you're going into this game... seriously make sure you have an in depth guide ready at ALL times. You just. Have to. Or you're going to be wandering around for 100s of hours.

The plus side! Generally really enjoy this game's overall aesthetic and atmosphere. It does the ancient ruins feel better than almost any game I've played. You really FEEL like John Adventurer going through some bullshit ruins with tons of secrets and lore everywhere. The graphics/art style are simple but look really nice for what it is. Again, very nostalgic.

Music is really good! Thank god it is, because you're gonna be wandering aimlessly for so long! But no complaints here. Lots of good songs here all around.

Bosses are generally?? Neat? Sometimes they can feel pretty cheap but at the same time they're not nearly as hard as the puzzles so its not so bad. Plus their presentation tends to be really cool.

The actual platforming and movement is... hard to say. It's extremely clunky to say the least, very much like old school Castlevania, but I'll admit, it's kind of fun to actually learn how all the stupid physics work and get good at them. This is honestly a plus for me, but might be negative for most people. I dunno, the clunk felt good for this game.

Overall, I feel I have a love-hate relationship with this game. It's really quality for what it is, but you need to be the right person to play it, or you need someone who knows the game inside and out to watch you at ALL times and be ready to tell you what to do when you get stuck. It's just really frustrating but still cool. I have a strange kind of respect for the way it's made. There ARE clues and hints everywhere it's just they're SO scattered and SO cryptic and like...

idk. Get the game if you want, just be extremely aware of what madness you're getting yourself into

Neetsel
Neetsel

If you enjoy Maze Of Galious on the MSX or enjoy challenging platform games focused on exploration and puzzles, this is a must play.

IceMajor
IceMajor

You play as Lemeza Kosugi, a professor of archaeology, trying to discover the mysteries of La-Mulana ruins, where his father is also currently residing. However, the ruins immediately let you know it is going to be ridiculously difficult to succeed. But you try your best.

You encounter A LOT of traps: a few of them are obvious, but most of them, besides from surprising you, frustrate you and make you miserable. Even more than traps there's information given to you from which you have to make something out of. The clue you have just seen may be important now, at the end of your adventure or, perhaps... even later? That is why a good archaeologist carries a notepad with him at all times and makes nicely arranged notes. Without it, you may as well give up.

After solving a riddle, you feel a great deal of satisfaction which is instantaneously killed off by noticing your notes are already five pages long, or you just get instakilled right after and YOU HAVEN'T F U C K I N G SAVED FOR FIFTEEN M O T H E R F U C K I N G MINUTES G O D D A M M I T!

Welcome to La-Mulana ruins...

First and foremost, La-Mulana is unique. I'm amazed with the amount of passion the game was developed with: you see it at each step. Everything is detailed and connected in a way you may discover hours later or never at all. Plus, there are dozens of mythological references that surely were backed by research. This very point would make it hard for me not to recommend the game because seeing such a big quantity of quality and care makes it worth appreciating even if the game is hard and/or unjust at times.

However - mind you, because I am indeed going to dissuade playing La-Mulana. I don't recommend getting La-Mulana for anyone looking for a relaxing, "fun-type" game for boring evenings. Waste of time, nerves and money. Here, you are required not to be playing in it, but be in it. To paraphrase Mortimer Adler, you have to become acquainted with the world - you have to feel like a part of it. The game was created with passion and you have to be playing it with passion. Only then can you discover the secrets of La-Mulana.

Meanwhile, when you continue your adventure, the brilliant sounds of La-Mulana make you wanna dance eat curry and sleep, but you can't lose your focus. See this statue right there? Yeah, it is incredibly likely that when you go past it, it will turn to a f u c k i n g boss that will backstab you.

Jokes aside - one of the best soundtracks ever, seriously. Fits the aura of the world just perfectly.

The level of difficulty between puzzles and actual platforming - jumping, killing enemies, bosses and whatnot - is pretty balanced. Both will f u c k you up and you'll fail, oh, trust me... You'll fail terribly. After playing DOOM, I thought it is going to be hard to beat its level of intensity and fair difficulty (have not played Dark Souls or Sekiro), but DOOM looks like a baby doll in comparision to La-Mulana. The struggle, however, is worth it - there will be moments of glory when you unclench your buttocks after defeating the 2nd boss in the 25th try.

I cannot praise it enough because I simply love this game (though it hates me). It's both a work of art and a masterpiece. When do you ever see something like La-Mulana? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think you do. The amount of gameplay that there is - at least sixty hours of playtime if you don't look up to the guide so often and most likely about two hundred and sixty hours when you never do so. Plus, it's not copy 'n' paste content like you see in every RPG. Ninety percent of s h i t you do is original and new - you don't know how to approach it, but it makes sense in the end with its great design. Especially the puzzles! I mean there's what? Easily more than a hundred of things wrtitten in, to quote George Carlin, "spooky language" to figure out. The best part of it is that they are really complex riddles but when you solve them, you notice how beautifully they all fit to the other ones, the world and the story overall.

For those who want to test their endurance, ambition and discipline, while accepting the fact that the game will be unjust and unfair at times, La-Mulana is a perfect choice. It has got everything the right video game adventure needs: witty dialogues, remarkable characters, fantastic, thematic music, complex riddles and incredibly tough bosses.

In La-Mulana there's no inbetween. You love it or you hate it. Either you survive or the ruins claim ya. Good luck.

AndriconBoy
AndriconBoy

An adventure game in the spirit of Lode Runner, Pitfall, and Miner '69er. You control a not-Indiana Jones character exploring ruins, collecting treasure, lashing skeletons, snakes, bats, and other enemies with your whip, and occasionally using a thrown weapon to take them out.

Pro:
Retro design is done pretty well. It reminds me of how games developed for computer in the 80's would put consoles from that time to shame.

Con:
Controls
Unclear objectives
Difficulty

iman
iman

One of the best games ive ever played

3abdoh
3abdoh

حاولت اعطيها فرصة لكن الخسارة المستمرة من دون نقاط حفظ طفشني

EternalGiraffe
EternalGiraffe

I 'recommend' this game more on a theoretical level than anything, as it's not to be played lightly.

La-Mulana is simultaneously the best and worst game of all time. While it presents itself as a difficult metroidvania, it's really a intensely involved puzzle game, requiring diligent note-taking, constant observation of every minor detail of your surroundings, and use of literally every function and tool available to you. The sheer level of planning and thought put in to create such a twisted, sprawling puzzle is mind-blowing, and while the puzzles all use the metroidvania mechanics they explore them so completely and in such varied ways that it rarely if ever feels like the game is repeating itself or padding out the puzzles. The puzzles also tie into the lore constantly and inextricably; the more you understand the puzzles, the more you understand the narrative and vice-versa, and in its entirety the story of La-Mulana is just as sweeping and spectacular as the game itself.

However, La-Mulana is also a game that has absolutely no respect whatsoever for your time or your sanity. The game isn't afraid to be excessively obtuse and will happily screw you over without a second thought with all sorts of gotchas, deathtraps and the like. Working through the game requires a lot of patience and a degree of masochism (or at least the ability to laugh off cheap deaths and the like). This is the reason it's hard to 'recommend' La-Mulana in such a sweeping way. If you love complicated, interconnected and often obtuse puzzles with a facade of metroidvania gameplay, and don't get frustrated even when a game kills you for fun or needlessly wastes your time, you should consider giving this game a shot.

Also the soundtrack is absolutely fantastic.

midnightdragoness
midnightdragoness

Originally posted on Dragon Quill. Comments are enabled there.

This is a troll game. I quit about 10 hours in after I beat a difficult boss at the end of a long area with no save points, only to investigate a suspicious alcove in the next area, which turned out to be a trap that instantly killed me, undoing all my progress. I’d genuinely like to get a refund.

I have one simple metric when it comes to Metroidvanias: If I ever have to consult a guide to figure out how to progress, you failed as a designer. Arguably this is true of any game, but it’s particularly bad for Metroidvanias, where figuring out the world yourself is supposed to be the entire point. If I can only play a Metroidvania by religiously consulting a guide at every turn, what’s even the point?

I hit this point about five hours in, I believe, where I had exhausted all available areas and still had absolutely no idea how to get into the Chamber of Extinction. I knew from the “hints” (which are terrible, more on that later) that I had to flood the Temple of the Sun, but there was absolutely no indication of how to do that. There is a pool with a suspicious stopper-looking thing in the Spring in the Sky, but unlike in other Metroidvanias there’s no world map that shows you how all the areas connect together, so there was no indication it was over the Temple of the Sun; furthermore, I did poke that stopper, but couldn’t figure out how to interact with it. Turns out you have to destroy a platform in the room that looks solid, then go up and hit a winch that looks like a background element to raise the stopper. It’s so obvious!

The insidious part is that La-Mulana doesn’t start this bad. It starts quite reasonably, in fact. The first area is full of skeletons from previous failed adventurers who you can scan for crucial info that adequately tutorializes many of the basic mechanics: Read the tablets, make sure you’re prepared before charging in, and some puzzle triggers can be traps. The puzzles in the first area are pretty straightforward, with the hints for each puzzle generally close by. I felt pretty confident after beating it.

Turns out that was the real trap. The game immediately shoots up in difficulty; the hints get increasingly obtuse and often simply do not give you all the information you need, requiring you to make increasingly large leaps of logic to figure anything out. The very next area forces you to discern the identity of various statues based on hints scattered throughout the area, but there are two statues with the exact same distinguishing feature, and it is literally impossible to discern which is which. Apparently you are supposed to decide that when asked to find a statue with a chest wound, you are supposed to pick the statue that is also headless instead of the one that is in perfect condition except for a chest wound, because being headless is just an irrelevant aesthetic detail! Obviously!

Probably my favorite example is the boss fight with Anubis. Immediately before the arena, there’s a tablet telling you that Anubis cannot be defeated without the Book of the Dead. Okay, I thought, clearly this means I should avoid this area until I find that item somewhere else. Turns out, no, you get that item by trying to fight Anubis anyway, confirming he’s invincible, at which point an escape route will appear (unlike every other boss ever), and only then can you mention this to a helpful NPC in another area, who will then reveal she had the book the entire time.

Here is a quote from the developers explaining the punishing design ethos of the game:

Let’s say you were an archaeologist. You’re standing in front of a dark hole that you can’t see the bottom of. Would you jump in? In real life, your response would probably be, “Heck no!” After all, you don’t know what’s down there. Or say you’re in a room filled with corpses and a bunch of switches. Would you just press them haphazardly at random? In this case too, you’d probably never do something so reckless. We wanted to try to incorporate this type of tension–a “Proceed with caution” type of feeling into the game.

[…]

With this in mind, we ended up making La Mulana a lot harder than we had been intending when we started the project. We tried to make it so that people wouldn’t get hopelessly stuck everywhere, but if you just whack walls at random without thinking you’ll die. If you think “Ooh, a treasure!” and run charging toward it without thinking, you’ll die.

But if you charge into a fight you know is impossible, you won’t die, that makes total sense.

And Anubis is far from the only example of this contradictory messaging. You see that bit about how if you whack walls at random you’ll die? You are told and shown early on that, because the ruins are holy, attacking certain objects will get you smote by the gods. Thank goodness, I thought, they’re critiquing the annoying Metroidvania trope of needing to smash every wall to find hidden passages! Surely they will use those famous puzzles I hear so much about to direct me instead. Ha ha, nope! There are still tons of unmarked secret passages you can only find by whacking walls at random, including one that looks exactly like the kind explicitly marked as “don’t hit this or you’ll get smote”, but that one you are supposed to attack, because!

The entire game is like this. The rules are completely inconsistent and the few “hints” the game gives you are deliberately insufficient to fill in the gaps. Sometimes you need to investigate suspicious alcoves to progress, sometimes that gets you killed. Sometimes you need to smash walls to progress, sometimes that gets you killed. Sometimes you’ll get a hint, sometimes you won’t. You’ll be told what item you need to solve a puzzle but not where to get it, which is useless. You’ll be expected to solve puzzles that use a completely unique mechanic that isn’t used anywhere before or after. (Like the Eden puzzle, where you have to use the hand scanner on a bunch of background details that look uninteractive.)

And then you get killed by a random trap and have to do it all over again, because oh did I mention, there’s only one save point per area?

The developers seem to believe the height of video game design is wasting the player’s time. You are forced to spend ages wandering around poking everything to brute-force these stupid, nonsensical “puzzles”, during which you will inevitably get sucker-punched by something without warning, and then you’ll have to do it all again. That’s not difficult, that’s not clever, it’s just banal and sadistic.

So screw that, I’m out. This game is for people who enjoy having their time wasted, and I’m not one of those people. If you want a difficult Metroidvania that’s actually fair, play Hollow Knight, and if you want a Metroidvania with a puzzle focus, play Toki Tori 2. This game is just a troll that people put way too much effort into.

DiabloGraves
DiabloGraves

This is mostly a mixed review, but the farther I get in it the less I want to recommend it. The intentionally-bad jumping mechanic is manageable at first, but once you get to sections where you're required to jump out of a liquid and it becomes maddeningly inconsistent, or these absolutely terrible Mega Man style block jumps, you start to wish you hadn't sunk so much time into the game that you're determined to see it through.

Granted, there's one part of this game that's the worst of all; I would tell it to you, but you'll have to go find it. I've hidden it in a treasure chest between 832 and 967 rooms to the left of your current position, and in order to get that chest to open you'll have to click on the secret comment I've hidden somewhere on the forums of a popular gaming website. To find the secret code that tells you what website it's on: take every 17th letter in this review, run it through a rot13 cipher, decode it using base64 and then the secret decoder ring in your Cracker Jacks box, and then throw all that out and just use a guide to get through this game because these puzzles are massive trolls.

keygunad
keygunad

Pros: a truly deep dungeon explorer, actually provides a real system of deciphering hints
Cons: very unforgiving, can be tedious, some information is very hard to reasonably know when playing the game

Джаз
Джаз

if you manage to get through this you'll come out a changed man
(don't forget to read the manual)

Sniper 1
Sniper 1

I knew this was a retro game but didn't expect it to be THAT MUCH retro. It's like those old games, it doesn't hold your hand at all and it assumes you read the manual. Make no mistake, you'll need to read the manual or risk getting stuck in the first area.

Overall, even with its flaws, La-Mulana is a great Metroidvania with challenging puzzles, but it's not for casual players. This is one of those games that you need to play with a notepad by your side, constantly taking notes of text, dialogs, points of interest, and connections between areas.

The most frustrating part is the jumping and "getting out of liquid" mechanics. It's like they are bad by design, but at least they are consistent. Once you learn their gimmicks and get used to them, you'll find yourself cursing the controls a lot less.

Sqweamish
Sqweamish

Absolutely fantastic puzzle game with a metroidvania skin, but not for everyone. If you don't take notes or don't want to take notes, this isn't going to be enjoyable. Every puzzle in this game has a hint somewhere in the game, you just need to find it. Keeping a word document chronicling your adventure, all the dialogues, tablets, and even some things in the environment is required to solve these puzzles. Being able to log all that information though and put things together is an experience like no other though. Combat and platforming are fine, but take some getting used to. Absolutely recommended if you like the feeling of solving a puzzle you've been stumped on for a long time because either you put something together in your notes or you found new information.

Hordian
Hordian

La-Mulana is one of the greatest games I've ever played, it's what you'd get if you combined Indiana Jones and Metroid, basically you have to explore ancient ruins full of secrets, these secrets are real secrets and you'll have to put the effort to overcome them and find the solutions before you can progress, this game takes itself seriously in it's setting and idea and it's what make it a wonderful experience.

Sigma.˪ₓ
Sigma.˪ₓ

La-Mulana is a game that's not for everyone but everyone should play. That's all there is to say about it tbh

Valkyrie Farrow
Valkyrie Farrow

When I bought this game, I wasn't expecting it to be this awesome and memorable. La-Mulana is probably the hardest game I've ever played (beaten Cuphead and Hollow Knight as a completionist before), but this is what makes the game even better. The game is extremely difficult with full of unexpected traps, obscure riddles and hard but exciting boss battles. The soundtrack is simply amazing and the game is just phenomenal overally. If you're not a veteran player, I wouldn't recommend buying it but otherwise, go get it so you can also brag about how you completed such a challenging yet wonderful game called La-Mulana. Can't wait to play the sequel.

Rating: S

Malibu Djangus
Malibu Djangus

Ah, the joy of exploration - I love this game already.

Huskybix 🏳️‍🌈
Huskybix 🏳️‍🌈

Do you love puzzles? Do you love metroidvanias?

Welcome to one of the best ever made.

Nora
Nora

this game made me kill fairies 0/10

Weebleton
Weebleton

Castlevania Jones: Adventure of Indiana Belmont

Siron
Siron

Well... this game is not for everybody, and it certainly was not for me.
The movement feels bad, the death mechanic is dated and terrible (it kicks you back to the home screen every time), it's all cryptic and clunky. I guess a lot of people enjoy this one, but I certainly did not.
My take: Sit this one out and play a more fun and less jank metroidvania

AndrewPlaysGames
AndrewPlaysGames

Game can be extremely unclear about how to progress in many places, which makes it really long and difficult, and not in a fun way. I think it is unplayable without Youtube walkthroughs, unless you really have nothing to do and want to turn ~10 hour game into a 40-hour game from both (a) lots of blindly walking around and smacking walls hoping to find something, and (b) meticulously note-taking clues on real paper outside the game to put together the dozens of clues that might or might not matter anywhere in the entire game.

RealNelster
RealNelster

This game is Bridget from GuiltyGears.

Strategos
Strategos

I absoltuely loath this game. The design choices are appalling.

TwoFatGeorge
TwoFatGeorge

A Metroidvania in spirit, and spirit alone, this game is punishing, grueling, fascinating, beautiful, but ultimately not for people who are looking for something that takes inspiration from action titles.

Make no mistake, this is very much a puzzle/adventure game that does it's very best to be just as frustrating as the old MSX-generation games it emulates. This game was not for me, but it's both visually and technically great and the soundtrack is good enough to listen to by itself. A great game for fans of old-school dungeon crawlers and spelunking titles, but calling it a "Metroidvania" is misleading to folks like me who are products of the public education system.