Poe is a simple action-arcade game made for the Revival Jam 2 game jam by Denis Grenier, and is a good bit of quick fun to play in your browser if you’ve got some spare time.
You play as Poe, a sweet little black cat that finds itself entering a haunted house packed to the brim with ghosts, ghouls, and monsters. In order to defeat the beasties that dwell in this abode, you must click and drag Poe in a slingshot manner to fling the little guy at them.
Every room brings new beasties to bang your head into but you’ve got to be careful, because the numbers beside the enemy’s health bars signal how many shots you’ve got left before they strike. Some of them pack a real punch!
You’ll also collect coins and treasures from the monsters. The dosh can be used to heal Poe, buy a ball of yarn that you can thwack around for more hits, or to buy a shower of bombs that falls from the top of the screen.
While simple to pick up, Poe is still pretty challenging! I’ve only gotten up to Room 4, so my advice is to use your coins wisely. If you’re really in for the long haul, you can also use no coins at all and save them up until you’re cashed up as whatever you have left when you die will come with you in a new game.
I’m a big fan of the odd free browser game that I can mess around on in my healthy bouts of procrastination (here’s a list of some great ones), and Poe is perfect for just that. The graphics are adorable, the chiptune music is fittingly nostalgic, and it’s ultimately just very entertaining.
Grenier’s work outside of Poe is also in a similar style of ‘give this a go if you’re bored and want something cute to play and listen to’. Oakley is a Flappy Bird-type game where you guide a leaf-surfing acorn through a trail of cute but deadly bugs before the clock strikes 0 (it’s a lot nicer to look at than Flappy Bird) and Dinocity Rumble is a timed slide-puzzle game where you have to save civilians from dinosaurs on an island ripe with active volcanos.
You can check out all of Grenier’s sweet little retro-style games over on his Itch.io page, most of which are browser-based and all of which are a hoot!
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