For gaming fans that remember the old NES days, it wasn’t uncommon to get games that would give you a feeling that you’d imagine wasn’t too unlike being thrown into a woodchipper, at least at first. You’d play and struggle, struggle and play, and if you persisted with at least some titles, you’d eventually overcome them even if powered mostly by a sense of muscle memory rather than skill. Whether they were hard through careful design, or merely because they never stopped throwing more things at you to deal with, that used to be one legitimate way you’d get value out of your purchases.

You can definitely sense that modern indie developers who’ve decided to embrace gaming from that era are happy to indulge your masochistic tendencies if you have them, and Spear of Sacrilege was absolutely made in that general mold. Starting with its very OG Castlevania-style look and feel, its catchy chiptune soundtrack, there’s no missing the game’s classical inspirations. While perhaps I would have preferred your moves in general not seeming to be quite so stiff, they at least feel authentic without question, and even if you may struggle at times, for old-school gamers the experience as a whole should feel roughly like home. You may generally feel underpowered as you try to survive its pretty varied stages, but you will get some enhancements for when you throw your spear that do power you up nicely, you just may curse that the rosary beads that dictate how many you can throw can feel painfully limited.

In terms of the areas where a little more refinement could have helped, I do wish that enemies didn’t respawn quite so much or so quickly. Things can be tough enough as they are without having enemies spawn behind you on occasion, which can sometimes feel pretty unfair. The same can be true for some elements like the spike strips that you can either avoid or perform a downward spear attack on to bounce across, but get to be hard to make out when there are layers of enemy bodies down in the area effectively obscuring them. In general there are just numerous smaller details that can cause frustrations that don’t really ruin the game, but can still make it less enjoyable just because they feel a bit cheap. All in all fans of tougher retro fare should still get a kick out of it, but if you were hoping for something less aggravating you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.