Yeah, it's a 'Metroidvania' game. You explore an underground labyrinth, all the while passing by doors and powerups that you can see, but are locked off from you until you get the appropriate upgrade. I haven't played too far into the game, mainly because of the poor control design. There's no separate key for the player's 'Metal Slug' style knife attack, so you have to time your attack just right, so that you swing your knife instead of shooting your gun. This is really inconvenient at the beginning of the game, where wasting (what might not later be) precious ammunition can halve your chances of survival. That and the pistol bullets seem to be weaker than the knife, so if you shot a bat at close range, all you've done is damage him a little bit before he takes away your only spare hit (until you get a later upgrade).

There's no option to 'look up and shoot' that I can see, which only makes everything that much harder. And there's no gamepad support.

Frustration does not make for fun gameplay, which is a shame since this game looks beautiful.

Project Blacksun is a rewardingly difficult character-action game kin to the Metroid titles of yesteryear, and definitely has a worthy spot in the genre. The sidescrolling game play with tight and smooth controls mixed with hidden collectables and well integrated upgrades; such as sliding, will keep you glued to your seat playing this game to its completion constantly begging for more.

That being said the game isn't without its flaws. I find myself shooting my gun when I mean to swing my knife or being caught out by an enemy while my character reloads the gun because I pressed the firing button one too many times. These issues don't surface too often, and will definitely not hinder your experience with this phenomenal game anytime soon.

The art style for Project Blacksun is very retro inspired, appearing more like a Super Nintendo title rather than a billion polygon brown looking modern video game. The environment and atmosphere design is something the game does perfectly, often making subtle changes over time and before you know it you're in an entirely different area. Boss and enemy design is also very well crafted, each one fitting perfectly into its environment and filling their roles flawlessly.

While not necessarily bringing anything new to the genre there are many reasons to own it: the inviting art direction, flawless game design, brilliant environments, and incredibly low asking price just to name a few. I highly recommend picking this game up.

At the crossroads between metal slug and Super Metroid, there is PBS, an insanely hard, but real fun and challenging game. This is the kind of games that will be always too short for the 16 bits era lovers. I may have wanted a higher resolution for full screen but everything that makes this kind of games good is there.

A metroidvania game that also tries to go for an older Metal Slug feel, its fun to explore and has a very satisfying feel making your very limited initial protagonist grow to a powerhouse as things go on. An interesting array of enemies, but I feel that polish is sort of all over the place in the title. Still, can't say I didn't enjoy myself with it. Be warned though, this game is not easy. It rags on you continually from finish to end.

Project Black Sun is similar to the classic Castlevania and Metroid games.

It reminded the present reviewer of a superior freeware title called 'Eternal Daughter'.

PROJECT BLACK SUN: With limited ammo for your gun in the beginning, you set off on your adventure. You confront bats, rats, zombies, scorpions and vicious plants among other creatures. Your close quarters combat is an attachment to your ranged combat, not a whole other feature of the game. You are not able to take a swipe at creatures no matter how far they are from you, only when they have well and truly reached you, before then you rely on your gun which may or may not vanquish the foes coming toward you from difficult angles. You gain grenades very soon into the game.

Project Black Sun could have been improved on by:

- adding close quarters combat as an independent feature of the game instead of just something activated for the combat when the game's enemies get near enough.

- adding to the player's weapon arsenal.

- improving on the game's storyline.

- allowing more flexibility in jumping/platforming.

Good platform with good and oldie taste from 16bit era. Some mix between Spelunky, la Mulana, or Unepic, and other similar games for PC. If you have doubts of getting this game, forget them it's a really cheap tittle for the gameplay. Runs smooth on Mac & PC. It's a very polished gem.

A VERY difficult Metroidvania-esque indie platformer with some solid gameplay. I felt that the controls were a little bit on the clunky side, but after extended periods of play, I got used to them. If you enjoy challenging and rewarding old-school platformers with an emphasis on exploration and back-tracking, I believe you would enjoy this game. Just be prepared for a steep learning curve. For this price, I would recommend the game to the aforementioned enthusiasts.

This platformer is not very good in my opinion. Graphically it isn't too exciting, but that I can live with, my issues come down to control and expectations. I have never been a fan of games where your opponent can not only do things you cannot, but even things that contradict reasonable expectation. In this game, one of the first enemies you meet, the bat, does this by flying through walls, floors, everything.

Now, this would normally tick me off, but when you equip me with gun that can only fire horizontally, limit my mobility by, e.g., walls and floors, and in other ways prevent me from mounting a defense in ways that do not seem reasonable given your opponents capabilities, I quickly lose patience, and interest.

Fortunately, there are lots of platformers out there.

GAMEPLAY:

"Project Black Sun" is an action platformer with a large map. This map is separated into several rooms, each of which scrolls in 4 directions. The player explores the map, kills or evades enemies, collects upgrades, and needs to win fierce boss battles in order to obtain keys, which open up new areas of the map.

This game could have been enjoyable if it just offered a difficulty setting. As it is, the game is just a very frustrating experience for most players. The problem is not so much that the game is hard - hard games can be very rewarding for those players that pull through -, it's that the game offers absolutely no backup option for players that don't have years of Nintendo training, and is plainly unfair in many respects. The game just seems hell-bent on making your task as difficult as possible, by any means available:

- You start out with just two lives, and barely enough ammunition to survive the first two rooms.

- You can save ammunition by attacking monsters in melee, but doing so requires precise timing, since there is a delay between the player's pressing the button and the character's actually trying to hit something.

- You cannot shoot while jumping. Often you have a clear line of sight on the enemy, but can't shoot it because the game insists that you must stand on the ground if you want to attack.

- You cannot move while reloading your weapon. You cannot cancel reloading your weapon. If you start reloading your weapon and an enemy appears, you can just watch helplessly while your character gets attacked.

- Several jump sequences require very accurate timing. However, the game overlays your feet with dust graphics just after you've landed, obfuscating exactly the area that you need to watch very closely to time the next jump.

- There are several secret passages in the game. These are not indicated by anything. So the game wants you to run against every single wall on the map because it _could_ be fake.

- The game only saves progress in a few specific rooms - and at least one of those rooms is placed in a way that it even _negates_ all of the progress that you've made. There is a place where you fall down to the very first room of the game, and the game then takes this game as your new "base location", which means that you must replay through all rooms you've battled through already if you want to get back to the place you've fallen down from.

- Even if you cope with all that - which I did -, then, right when you think you're finally getting the hang of things, you are faced with ridiculously difficult boss battles.

I tried to like this game, but apparently it just doesn't want me to. After several hours of playing, and discovering all upgrades and secrets available to me, I am now facing two boss battles which I cannot win no matter what I do. I have given up now.

Another problem with the game is that it doesn't give you any good incentives for pulling through. There is no story, no narrative, that would make the player feel attached to the character and pull through. The story that is there is just a simple backdrop that explains why the character ended up in a system of caves. There is no actual narrative and no personality to any character. The game is just excruciatingly hard for the sake of being excruciatingly hard. Wanting to provide players with a challenge is one thing - but constantly kicking all other customers in the teeth is just a glaring design flaw.

GRAPHICS:

The game uses retro graphics, but they are drawn nicely. With smooth animations and scrolling, the graphics don't feel as dated as the term "retro" might imply.

Unfortunately, the game does not scale well on my 1920x1200 display. There is a fullscreen mode, but it just uses about 2/3 of the screen area, with black bars around the image in every direction.

SOUND:

The game's soundtrack is beautiful, professional game music. The sound effects are of varying quality, but get the job done. There is no voice acting.

INTERFACE:

The game must be controlled with either the keyboard or a gamepad. Mouse support does not exist, not even in the menus. The keyboard controls can be customized.

Alt-tabbing out of the game does not stop the music, which is inconvenient when you need to concentrate.

EASE OF USE:

The game is easy to install, and the controls are easy to learn. Learning how not to die may take a while.

There is no manual, but none is needed to understand the game. The controls are obvious, and further information can be found in the readme file.

OTHER THINGS OF NOTE:

As said above, the game is - unfortunately - just too hard to be enjoyable, unless you're really good and well-trained in this type of games, which most players probably aren't.

CONCLUSION:

In its current state, the game is not enjoyable enough to give it more than two stars. An option to set the difficulty would be worth at least one more star. Unfortunately the game doesn't seem to be in active development any more.

Review Date: 2012/Oct/01

Program version: 1.0.2

Progress: 8 hours, probably about 20% of the game (estimated)

Do you like Castlevania? Super Metroid? Here is a game for you. The game is very polished, graphically speaking and gameplay wise. The graphic is charming, and the control is good enough. The difficulty is a bit high, to a level causing minor frustration, but that's also the case for Castlevania and Super Metroid. It is a suprisingly good game for this price.

This game is an old school 2D sidescrolling, Super Metroid game style lots of explorable areas and hours of playtime, worth of your attention, plus right now you can get it even cheaper on the Indie Fort bundle, don't forget this game might be challenging at start, till you get the hang of it, but all in all it's a must have.

For its price, the game is a very polished take on the exploration+platforming genre. My only gripe with it is strangely sparse on checkpoints, which means lots of backtracking if you die. Which you will, because the game is also a bit high on the difficulty. Still, an extremely polished game available for a very cheap price. Definitely worth a try.

This game looks really nice, but it has serious balancing issues. The gun is weak and shoots only forward, but when you run out of ammo, you get to use the vastly superior knife. The knife deals significantly more damage and can be spammed to kill anything in your path. Unfortunately, enemies drop ammo, so I found myself having to drain my bullet count every time I killed someone.

i like the premise, but after a couple of hours into the core gameplay, cant help to notice some anoying mechanincs. Still, its a good game, i finish it in 12 hours.

It need a better map, to know witch doors are locked.This made me wander around the map countless times.

Some developed in the back story would be great too.

Out of the many indies nowadays this one has a very nice retro feel to it. As a fan of retro style graphics and gameplay I finds this title worth the while. Although it is quite hard, oldschool gamers might find it interesting.

For its price, this game is worth the buy.

To put it simply: "A kick in your teeth hard game in the vein of Metroid and Castlevania"

Expect to die. Alot. In the early stages of this game. I did (Damn those spiky rocks of certain death!) But I had alot of fun doing it.

The art style I have to admit is my favorite feature (just ahead of the music), I'm a sucker for the classic pixelated look as I grew up on them from Super Metroid, to Mega Man and so on.

Bottom line: Would I recommend it? Yes I would. For two bucks its a beautiful looking game, nice sound track to it and a difficulty level that is not forgiving. Would I recommend it to anyone who has not played the capcom classic of mega man? No, because you will probably raqequit after dying at the same spot more then twice.

I wouldn't recommend this game unless you like old school artificial difficulty and game design choices. You start only able to shoot forth and bats love to come above you, but since you can't aim up you might just get hit then knocked into a pit. You also only start with just 2 hits and work your way up, but there are a lot of platforming cheap death designs that are reminiscent of older NES game designs. Avoid this one if you're trying to get a metroid-vania experience like Symphony of the Night or Super Metroid.

Blacksun's game play is heavily influenced by the Castlevania and Megaman series, that much is obvious just from the screenshots but the developer has also nailed down Capcom's mastery of challenge and Konami's mastery of aesthetics and polish.

I could've easily seen this winding up as a high priced and rare auction site find had it been released back in the day for PSOne.

If you have a fondness for the above mentioned games this is an absolute must buy!

Project Black Sun is, in all it's unforgiving difficulty, beautiful graphics and great atmospheric audio, a precious gem in our streamlined million dollar franchise world. I wish Starflower Games all the best and hope they continue making memorable games like this.

Yes, I managed to finish the game after a long and frustrating series of repetitions, but it makes beating the game so much more gratifying.

I really want to like this game. It's got consistently decent pixel art and serviceable music, with competent sound design. It's got okay level design for the most part and I like Metroid-type games.

But: this game is terribly terribly hard, such that it's nearly impossible. The game really needs to be balanced better, or at least have an easy mode. It feels like the dev balanced it by playing through it him/herself and assuming that everyone would have the same level of skill.

Also, a minor concern: the game has two default control setups, both of which are terrible. Fortunately, you can map your own control scheme. Unfortunately, it forgets your custom keybindings whenever you start the game.

So. I'd give this game 4 or even 5 stars, but unless and until it gets better-balanced, I can't honestly give it better than a 3.

Interesting to note, the game will kill you. And I mean in the first few minutes, without warning, to your complete shock. And again. And again. Suffice it to say, if you don't level up in "I'm gonna beat this game no matter what", chances are you won't even last ten minutes. Cheers to you if you make it past that mark. You'll find new and better ways to die over the course of the game. Getting killed about five times on the exact same spot, and then again one screen later is frustrating to some, but it does get fun once your mind goes down the crazy drain. Old School difficulty at it's greatest! You've been warned.

This is a beautiful and immersive indie accomplishment that, unfortunately, turned out to be a bit too unforgiving for my taste. Either way, I'm happy I picked it up simply as a way of supporting the developer, because I'm very excited to see what they'll do next. Anyway... if you think this title looks interesting I'd definitely recommend checking it out - after all, it's not exactly expensive!

Fun, but HARD. It is pretty easy to burn through your starting two health quickly. Still, a great game for those who like Metroid-like gameplay.

It would be nice if the map system had more features (manual labels), and some of the controls are a bit awkward (sliding). Still, for $2, a lot of fun can be had here.

A few things come to mind when I think of this game, 16-bit (yay!), Metroidvania, and HARD. This game will KILL YOU (AS HCBailly would say). The controls have some issues but for the most part it's a matter of getting your groove with the game. There are many secrets to find and of course being a Metroid style game power ups. The art style is very nice, however the main man always seems a bit too big to me for the environment, but hey that's just me (I played a Gnome in WoW So...) All and all, a nice little indie game that can cause rage but good rage.

A decent game with a few good ideas, what keeps this game from being good is its prohibitive difficulty due to the low health, the rarity of health and ammunition drops and lack of save points at the start of the game, making play an exercise in dying, reloading and repeating the same areas.

A Metroid-vania platformer that's as difficult as it is beautifully retro, reminding me graphically of the Metal Slug series. Those who want an old school challenge without the complete frustration of a poorly designed game need to look no further.

Project Black Sun came out of nowhere and surprised me. Two-man team Starflower Games has produced a refreshingly back-to-basics platform roamer - a distinct homage to Super Metroid - and it's a joy to play. Black Sun scores major points for its gorgeous art and music, tight gameplay, and classic atmosphere.

Beyond the brief introduction, there are no cutscenes or friendly characters here - just a sprawling, silent, multidirectional maze full of secrets and powerups, Metroid-style. Controls are tight and responsive, but they take a bit of getting used to - you can only fire horizontally, and you can't fire while jumping. This felt like a handicap to me at first, but the game is actually balanced around these restrictions, so once I got used to it, I didn't even notice anymore. Reloading is a bit trickier - you are extremely vulnerable while reloading, so you have to think ahead during boss fights.

Black Sun's difficulty level has been a problem for some. The version I played, 1.0.2, apparently smooths over a few issues. I found the game to be challenging, but very approachable and very winnable. The early game can be rough, as you have few bullets and very little health, but once you've found a few powerups and gotten the hang of combat, making progress gets a lot easier. There are a handful of unfairly-positioned enemies here and there, but they don't detract much from the big picture.

The only glaring difficulty problem I see is with the first boss, Chrosios, as his cave-in attack can be very difficult to avoid. If you're having trouble, I recommend skipping him and moving on to the second boss, Anyos. Anyos is much easier, and his key will let you pick up at least one more heart container, which will make a big difference against Chrosis.

All in all, there's a lot to like about Project Black Sun for fans of Metroidvanias, and there's a fair bit of content here for such a low price (my first playthrough took me a bit over seven hours to complete). Starflower Games has definitely gotten my attention.

Demo: Controls sometimes remap themselves after you die (ie. left and right become flipped). You only die in a couple of hits, even from trivial enemies like rats and bats. Still, I love the look and ambience of this game.

Full Version: There doesn't seem to be link to download the full version for Mac, only for PC. What's up?

While Project Black Sun has a lot going for it, it suffers from an extremely unforgiving level of difficulty. You begin the game with a mere two hit points, and it just gets worse from there. I like the graphics, music, and setting very much, and the controls are actually pretty good. This is one of those hard games that is legitimately hard - it's part of the design and not a by-product of sloppy coding. However, I will probably not get to see much past the first boss fight, since I have died literally a hundred times trying to not get hit by the boss's main attack. I have never avoided it once. This came after going through a series of many, MANY rooms between inconveniently located checkpoints, and I think I'm going to have to throw in the towel on this one.

It looks nice, but please proceed at your own risk - and that of your sanity and keyboard as well.