Legend of Kalevala
Legend of Kalevala is a 2D retro Metroidvania game made by ChainedLupine or Dit Dah Games.
Legend of Kalevala takes place on the mysterious world of Kalevala. You, an alien quadruped, awaken in a lush forest with no memory of how you arrived or of your past. As you get a bearing on your surroundings, you see a damaged spacecraft dive through the air and crash on the other side of a mountain. Seeing this as your means of remembering your past, you set off in search of the downed ship. Unfortunately, the place you awoke in is not exactly friendly to visitors, and it appears that your body has a past all its own...
Use your Bizarre Alien Biology as you navigate the treacherous and dangerous world of Kalevala. Obtain new skills and abilities to explore more of the land. Regain your memories to piece together more of the story and yourself. Discover the many secrets behind this strange new world while exploring the vast region and fighting to survive against the hordes of hostiles. One thing's for certain, this place hides a dark secret...
Not to be confused with the Finnish national epic.
Can be played at here.
- Abusive Precursors: The Ancestors, seeing how they turned Kalevala into a Death World and abused their relationship with the Kuriiri.
- Subverted; it is later revealed that they felt guilty for their past actions and, as a result, uploaded their brains to a unified machine form and isolated themselves. They turned Kalevala into a Death World to prevent any visitors from making the same mistake.
- Convection, Schmonvection: You can glide rather near lava and still not get killed or damaged in the slightest. However, if you touch it...
- Death World: Kalevala itself, seeing that every portion of it has some type of bio-mechanical hostiles attempting to take you out.
- Double Jump: The third ability you obtain.
- Easter Egg: Multiple; exploring various nooks and crannies will net you some behind-the-scenes messages by the developer. There is also one section in "Skim the Sky" where you must go through a gauntlet of difficult monsters to find...a dead end and a Leaning on the Fourth Wall scene. Heavily Lampshaded by the protagonist.
- Essence Drop: If your HP aren't full, enemies drop healing spheres.
- Eternal Engine: What lies beneath the planet's surface and is the second region to be explored.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Justified; all the lifeforms on the planet were purposefully designed to attack Kurriri.
- Friendly Fireproof: Enemies are not harmed by acid. Justified; see Grimy Water, below.
- Grimy Water: There are a few pools that appear to be some kind of caustic acid. It's actually explained what it is; it's the base material used to create the bio-mechanical creatures that inhabit Kalevala, which explains why enemies aren't harmed by it.
- Heart Container
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The path of how the protagonist regains his memories.
- Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: Averted. If you touch any form of lava, you instantly get killed. It also has a different texture than acid. Convection, Schmonvection is not averted, however.
- Lava Pit: A few of them, more prevalent in the third-to-last screen. And of course, they kill you instantaneously if touched.
- Mecha-Mooks: Every enemy is some form of a mechanical being as found out in the story.
- Metroidvania: Albeit a small and fairly linear one. The developer says that the original version of the game was much more open-ended, but this daunted and confused beta testers, so he had to streamline it.
- Multiple Endings: Two of them to be precise.
- Downer Ending: The ending where you either don't have all four songs or don't activate the machine.
- Bittersweet Ending: The ending where you have all four songs and activate the machine. Kuris enters the light of the temple and activates the shield covering Kalevala, preventing any other beings from entering the planet and thus, fulfills the Ancestors' last wishes of isolation as well as thwarting the Kuriiri's intentions. Unfortunately, this means that both Kuris and the human are now trapped on the planet permanently, with no hope of re-contact, and left to die.
- Now Where Was I Going Again?: Pressing the "N" key will bring up an arrow pointing towards your next objective. Unfortunately, it does not always function properly.
- One-Hit Kill: All of the Lava Pits.
- Retraux: This game has graphics and audio quality and style circa of the SNES or 16-bit era.
- Shout-Out: The first boss is the Sinistar. And true to that game, you can only destroy it with bombs!
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The area "Human Dreams". Also houses the first boss. The mountain before it does have ice, but does not fulfill the slippery portion.
- Spikes of Doom: Found in several areas and take out one health bar. Which can be a problem at the start of the game where you only have two health bars.
- Temple of Doom: The Temple, which is full of guard machines and laser turrets. Also doubles as the final area of the game.
- Video Game Flight: Mixed with Not Quite Flight. In the early game, you obtain the ability to glide until you hit the ground. You can also be carried up by updrafts or pushed down by downdrafts while gliding.
- World Map: As of the 1.7 update, pressing "M" will bring up a map of every region you have explored.