Excellent bullet hell and melee battle mashup Furi dropped back in 2016 and left a big impact crater on action genre fans, demanding attention and careful play from players with a unique control scheme emphasizing dual stick play around shooting and slashing. It’s certainly one of those games for fans of responsive controls, people who really care about how a game feels while they’re playing it.
Now, developers The Game Bakers have dropped a free demake via another developer, Sylph, that reimagines Furi’s first boss fight against The Chain as an 8-bit era game with brilliant neon colors and high-contrast pixel-art visuals. It’s honestly a pretty wild bit of game design, taking a very 3D shoot-em-up and hack and slash title and making into a very 2D version of the same thing.
It’s complete with straightforward 3-button controls and a soundtrack to match the era. It’s free on Steam.
Since publishing Furi in 2016, developers The Game Bakers went on to make the 2020 cool and experimental 2020 cooperative RPG Haven. They teamed up with solo developer Sylph, whose previous works are a variety of retro-styled platformers, for the Furi demake.
PC Gamer’s review of Furi back in 2016 called it one of the year’s biggest, most pleasant surprises. The boss-rushing combat charmed reviewer James Davenport.
“Furi’s combat is shallow, and I mean that as a compliment. All you can do is observe, react, and punish. It’s advanced Bop-It, a lighting quick series of rock-paper-scissors, the Grand Finals in fly-swatting—Furi exercises the hell out of a very small set of abilities until they feel like they were always there,” he said in the 86/100 review.
You can find Furi Demake – The Chain on Steam. It’s free. You can also find the original Furi on Steam.