Twin Dragons Review – As the Last Game on Indie Heroes Collection 1, How Does It Measure Up Against the Others?

Playing modern indie games was a big reason why I became interested in the Evercade ecosystem, especially after the release of the First Indie Heroes Collection. After over a dozen reviews, I have come to the final game in this cartridge, which is a side-scrolling 2D Platformer originally released for the NES titled, “Twin Dragons.”

Premise, First Impressions and Initial Gameplay Design

In it, you play as a couple of kid dragons named Dinky and Minky who are watching the egg of their sibling at home while their parents are away. Unfortunately, a magician comes, steals the egg, and takes it away to a secluded tower for nefarious reasons. After being separated, Dinky and Minky travel through a few areas to reunite with each other, go up the floors of the tower, and rescue their sibling.

When I first played this, my initial impressions were quite good. From the start, the game had an effective use of a of color, along with quality controls and music. You start playing as the boy dragon, Dinky, who can shoot fireballs and also jump. Along the way you defeat enemies such as slimes, flying creatures, and others who live under the water. You also pick up green peppers to earn extra lives. Occasionally you’ll find a red pepper. If you can get it, it allows you to shoot a larger fireball that does more damage. This additional attack can be done an unlimited number of times.

Graphics

Beyond the premise and initial gameplay, I need to reiterate that the graphics in Twin Dragons are great! The color depth is high quality for the system, with ample shading on characters and objects in the world. The backgrounds are diverse, as are the variety of areas that you travel through.

These include the typical grassy areas, an icy mountain, the sky, and more. Each of these have some unique graphical touches that add character to the surroundings. For example, the icy area has stalactites that fall when you get close to them along with spikes on the ground. Most areas introduce a new foe to face or platforming challenge to overcome. The pixel art is well done, with everything looking great.

Concerning your playable characters, I found Dinky and Minky to be quite cute, especially when they are standing still. They stare back at you as they wait for you to control them, which I thought was charming. Also, when they get frozen by enemies, they look kind of funny too.

I was pleased with the graphics throughout the adventure and was impressed by all the facets of it. Nothing felt out of place or looked “worse” than other assets elsewhere in the game.

Music and Sound Effects

Not to be a broken record, but this is another area where the game excels. Unlike some other titles in the Indie Heroes Collection 1 cartridge, the amount of music in Twin Dragons is pretty diverse with each area having their own theme. I enjoyed the majority of these, and felt like they sounded more like professional compositions than most of the games on this cart. I say this because,

• The tracks aren’t too short,
• There are a good variety of them,
• And they are composed well without seeming too simple.

If you’d like to hear some of it, the complete OST can be found on YouTube by clicking here. Although, be aware that the pinned comment that gives time stamps for the songs shares slight spoilers for what happens in the title. In total, the OST is 27 minutes in length. By the way, the game features a Jukebox option accessible from the title screen, which is cool!

For the sound effects, they were fine and not irritating or grating. I liked them, and they were what I expected from a quality NES title.

More on Gameplay Flow

Turning back to gameplay, I’d like to share a few other concepts. After a few stages of an area, you come to a boss. Once you defeat him or her you go to the map screen and are given a password. These are very much appreciated because Twin Dragons is not the easiest platformer. Although you can earn extra hit points by collecting hearts in a stage, you only have three hit points before dying. You can continue, but doing so takes you back to the beginning of an area. This is even the case even if lose all your lives at a boss. At least with the password system you have an unlimited number of chances to complete an area.

Still, being defeated can be frustrating because losing to a boss means you have to redo the entire area again. For the bosses themselves, their patterns tend to involve some kind of spread shot. This can become boring because probably 80% of the bosses use such attacks. After seeing them so much it made me wish the designers had more diversity in how they developed their boss attack strategies. The fact that there is so much repetition at these points feels out of place when the rest of the game showcases a good deal of diversity.

After completing a few areas, a second playable character becomes available. As I shared earlier, her name is Minky. She has unique abilities that are distinct from Dinky. I’ll refrain from saying more so as to not spoil everything. Yet, I’d like to mention that Twin Dragons does a great job of introducing new gameplay mechanics and challenges throughout the game (excluding the bosses). It’s one of the things that I was most impressed about as I played it.

Game Length and Difficulty

Twin Dragons has the distinction of being the perfect length for me. There are about 7 major areas that you travel through, and although I didn’t count all the stages as I went along, there’s probably 25+ levels in the game. I consider this to be a good length for a modern Indie Platformer.

The difficulty wasn’t overly challenging, at least in the first few areas. However, it did ramp up toward the second half where it became a significant challenge. Yet, the stage design wasn’t cheap, and as I played the sections repeatedly, I could see how they could be completed with practice.

Unlike some other side-scrolling Platformers I’ve reviewed on this cart, Twin Dragons does a great job of providing additional hearts to restore health in many stages. These come from defeated enemies or through large hearts located in some of the stages. Additional 1-Ups are also available at times, along with the green peppers that I mentioned previously.

Now, I won’t be spoiling much of anything here, but I’d like to stress that the final boss was quite a bit more difficult than the rest of the game. The first few times I took it on I thought it was impossible. No joke!

Yet, I was able to find a longplay that showed how to defeat it and other challenging areas if you need tips on completing such sections. I won’t link to the one I used so as to avoid direct spoilers, but the person I watched took 35 minutes to beat the final boss through a multitude of attempts. At least the game mercifully gives you a password just before the finale.

Overall, Twin Dragon has a good level of challenge, and it can be frustrating to a reasonable extent. However, with the password system, at least you don’t have to restart at the very beginning of the game when you lose all your lives. It does have three difficulty settings. Along with normal, there’s also easy and hard.

Final thoughts

As I’ve already conveyed much in this review, I find this game to be really impressive! While there are a few other titles on this cartridge that are also top tier, such as Flea! (Review) and Deadeus (Review), I consider Twin Dragons to be the most well-rounded.

As I played through the game, I was regularly impressed by it in multiple ways. Some of these included level design that taught the player how to control your characters. Moreover, the developer was self-aware enough to know that some sections of the game were difficult, and most players would need a large heart to make it to the end.

Finally. I can’t really fault Twin Dragons in any way! I even view it to be the best game on the Indie Heroes Collection 1 cart! In fact, I’d be excited if a sequel was made for it someday.

Now that this review is done, one of my next posts will be about the Indie Heroes Collection 1 cartridge as a whole. I hope that you’ll be here to read it! After that, I’ll be continuing my exploration of the Mega Cat Studios Collection 1 cart. It is the earlier Evercade release I own.

In the meantime, the last two games I reviewed from Indie Heroes Collection 1 include KUBO 3 and Flea!

Note: After completing this review I learned that a lot of the sprites in this game were from a publicly available series of sprite tiles located here. This did not have an impact on my rating of the game.

Title: Twin Dragons (Website)
Genre: Side-scrolling 2D Platformer
Year Released: 2017
Developer: Broke Studio (YouTube Channel)
Available On: NES and Evercade through Indie Heroes Collection 1.
Price Paid: $1.14, or $16.00 for Indie Heroes Collection 1

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid. Please see my Review Rating Scale to know more of how I rate games.