So while I was trying Nintendo Online's NES classics I stumbled upon this game which I never heard about before but turned out quite fun: Solomon's Key.
It's a puzzle platformer with many levels. Each level contains a key and a door at different positions of the room. The goal is to use Solomon's ability to create and destroy blocks to get the key to open the door and go inside after that.
The main thing you'd do with Solomon is to create a block and walk or jump over it to get closer to the goal. The blocks you create and the ones found in the level from the start are identical, but destroying some of the level based blocks might give you power-ups and collectibles.
Life in Solomon's Key is always decreasing, and you lose when it reaches zero which sets a time limit of 100 seconds of each level unless you get a life-boosting item. I like the small change of the background music when the life becomes too low.
There are a bunch of power-ups and collectibles. Solomon can get fire balls he can throw. Fire attack is very powerful but they're consumable items you don't have any at the start. They must be collected then used sparingly.
Something worth noting is that Solomon's Key is the first game I used Nintendo Online's Save States feature extensively on my Switch. I found that I lose a lot of unnecessary time each time I lose and have to restart from level 1.
I liked how there are new enemies/mechanics on each level. Experimenting on new enemies caused my loss more than once so I decided on using Save States to save time and have fun trying things that would most likely cost Solomon's his life.
My impression of this game is that it's both fun and challenging. I'm surprised I never heard about it. I think the game's mechanics are almost perfected here and it's definitely one of my favorite NES games in the available collection.
Solomon's Key is another game I wouldn't have tried if not for Nintendo's Online NES service, and I'm glad to get to know this game. A pleasant surprise indeed.
What do you think?
First image uses the game's box art taken from here. All the other images are screenshots taken by me.
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Solomon's Key was one of those games I picked up from a rental store clearance sale back in the day. No instructions, no box, just the game and a clear clamshell case like what they rented games in.
After the first weekend of having this game, and several hours of frustration trying to figure out why this did not play like Super Mario Bros, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. It was just so different than other games on the console at the time.
I don't remember what I paid for it, it wasn't much as Solomon's Key was not a popular title for the store so they wanted it gone so they could reclaim that space. That store ended up eventually carrying a lot of Super Mario Bros and scrolling shooter games. It is the store that got me hooked on games like Abadox, Metal Storm, Air Fortress, etc. I was burned out on run and jump games at the time as I view Solomon's Key being the game that made me expand my horizons a bit in that category.
Great review by the way. I don't own a Nintendo Switch but keep finding myself wanting one.
Great game. Easy to learn but difficult to master.
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