Sometimes the best or funnest games I end up finding are by complete chance or by a fluke. And this is one of those times.

This is quite a hidden gem, and I really hope as we go into 2025 us gamers see more games like this on both steam and consoles. Ya gotta love when modern retro is done right

As expected, one might ask, what is GuardGrave? In my opinion, it's an amalgmation of the following games, and it does so in a GREAT way

Burgertime-Like Burgertime, the main objective is to take a "piece" of your objective, and drag it down floors by interacting with it/moving over it. You do this while climbing ladders and avoiding baddies. However, instead of avoiding the likes of Mr Hotdog, Mr Egg, and Mr Pickle, you instead have to avoid ghouls and ghosts (yes that was a reference on purpose) like zombies, ghouls, skeletons, bats and ghosts as you bring casket lids down floor by floor and, just like Burger Time, you can drop enemies with these lids to make them fall further towards the objective or drop the lids on bad guys

Castlevania-This has a very supernatural/occult theme to it without going into anything extremely grim, but the main gist of this game is you are on a timer and play as two people who are graveyard managers. Suddenly at night, monsters like zombies, ghosts, bats, skeletons and the like start coming out of the caskets, it's up to you use a hammer power up to frantically avoid monsters and seal their caskets back. (FYI, I am aware I mentioned this earlier, but that's more froma gameplay standpoint where this is more the basic story standpoint) .

Essentially this is like you took the concept of Castlevania and made it a LOT more cutsey and campy. It doesn't help that there ARE religious style refrences such as crosses in later levels and a holy bible is a powerup to clear the screen. But like Castlevania, you also fight the likes of Dracula, The Grim Reaper, and many other big time supernatural villians in boss battles, again, just more campy and cute.

Ghouls and Ghosts-The Music and Pixel Art is like a fusion of Burger Time (main characters are Burger Time esque) but the music, monsters, and visuals of each stage is very reminscent of the cartoony approach to how Ghouls and Ghosts designed it's pixel art, I would specifically say it leans more twoards the SNES versions of the games from that series.

Lastly, I would say this game has a small influence on the whole "high score risk" type of game like, maybe a type of maze game, not necessarily Pac Man, but a maze game as a whole, it could also be the likes of mouse trap, ladybug and the like, but if I were to pinpoint a game that had a big risk factor like that, I would compare it to Lock n Chase

I mention that because maze games from the arcade era often had a high focus on risk versus reward, you often would get "tempted" by a LOT of bonus items in these games, they would distract you from your main objective and take away precious time from your main objective timer, but you'd in turn get big bonus points, additional time, and character power ups.

The big key in games like that was a mix of timing, pattern recognition, and a bit of luck.

In this game, you have everything from bonus jewels for extra points to the hammer powerup that is actually vital to complete the main game and objective (the hammer is the only way to seal the caskets and every lid takes 3 hits to knock down a floor) to hourglasses which extend the duration of a hammer power up, to speed shoes with wings that obviously increase speed, to Holy Bibles that nuke every monster on screen.

Last but not least is a star that actually falls onto the screen at an arc/ at an angle like a shooting star, which can extend the timer on the current stage.


All of these items are also worth points and you CAN choose to farm points if you are good enough, but even though this game is a score attack game, you have to constantly play tug of war with "risk vs reward" on "Do I want to survvie and get as far as I can this run? Or do I want to get as high a score as I can? Or something in the middle?

All these are great and can build up your score, but you obviously have to be mindful to not run out of time, and where both you and the enemies are positioned

The modern quality of life choices come in the form of modes like easy, normal/arcade mode, and hard mode, you can choose if you want an easy run to see other boards in the game, hard mode for a challenge, or just standard

Local co op is also a damn good touch, and even remote play together is an option for this title

Put this all into a complete package with fun and energetic/engaging music as the sprinkles on this cake, and I GUARANTEE you, if this was a real arcade game back in the day, this would be a GREAT arcade game and would've made a LOT of money. Hell, if this got a real arcade cabinet I guarentee some arcades out there would want one, especially since arcades are making a resurgence (♥♥♥♥ yeah).

To put it figuratively and humorously, this is like if Burger Time, Ghouls and Ghosts, and Castlevania had a quote on quote "cousin" that they don't see often, but when they do, they have great times every visit

GET THIS GAME IF YOU LIKE MODERN RETRO AND FRANTIC, ADDICTIVE AND CHALLENGING ARCADE GAMES

5 bucks is nothing for a hidden gem like this.

The ONLY downsides is no online leader-boards and no OST available!

This last tidbit is neither good nor bad, just a suggestion as an indie developer myself

One small suggestion to the developers, the high score screen does have strong language and sexual innuendo as some of the leaderboard names, I'm not saying get rid of these or censor/remove them, but essentially, to expand your audience, I would say give an option toggle (much like how some arcade games and pinball machines had "kid friendly" modes, even if they intially had mature and or adult themes) and just give an option in the options menu to turn the obscene high score names on or off

This is purely because I could see kids and or their parents and people of all ages LOVING a game like this, and I would imagine this game would otherwise be rated E10+ if it ever graces consoles (Which I ABSOLUTELY hope it does)

Bigger audience just means more money, exposure, and relevance. I wouldn't mention this if this I didn;t see this game as appealing to kids or if it was more M rated esque, such as Splatterhouse or House of the Dead, but that's obviosuly not the case here