Typically when I’ve played these old-school-inspired arcade indie titles there have been clear inspirations for their play, and thus an element of the fun has been reliving old memories. In the case of Goliath Depot, the presence of callbacks to classic games is less clear though, so it is instead forced to stand on its own. The result was an experience that I was slow to warm up to, but that continued to feel better the more time I gave it.

In terms of influences, the only one that comes to mind would be the charmingly weird Mappy, but that’s only due to the door-closing mechanic that will stun your enemies. The goal of every level is simply to close each of the doors, with knocking out stunned enemies merely being optional, but you’ll also absolutely want to pick up coins along the way whenever possible. Where the coins come into play is a part of what makes the game more novel, and improving as you play, and that’s the fact that it has a simple form of meta-progression, allowing you to unlock and use a skill to enhance your character. This is absolutely a game-changer, in particular the pricey double-jump which will really speed you up in clearing stages.

What’s unusual is that the game waffles a bit on what it wants to be, so the design doesn’t always feel as confident and ironclad as you’d expect. Through the first set of stages stunning and knocking your foes features pretty prominently, though not all enemies can be hit and they will return after a short time so it isn’t like getting them all was ever a goal. Where it gets more odd though is that through the second group of stages the level design often feels like it completely ignores your opportunities to stun enemies, with the emphasis being more on evasion and avoiding traps. Yes, this keeps everything from feeling too much the same, but at the same time the deviation makes the experience feel a little inconsistent.

In the end though, there’s something to be said for a retro-styled game that doesn’t feel like it’s cribbing too heavily off of titans, simply trying to entice classic fans with the promise of nostalgia. Instead, this feels like a legitimate attempt to make what could have been a contemporary of classics from the arcade boom, and that merits some praise. Laying a foundation of more classically-styled play, but then layering in both boss fights and some unlockable power-ups, manages to make it feel like an experience that is successfully straddling old-school and modern sensibilities, and is definitely appreciated for that effort.