izigame.me

It's not that I didn't enjoy playing some of the 13h I put in this to finish it, but all in all I wouldn't recommend Sydney Hunter even to fans of the genre since it's flawed and inferior in almost every aspect to similar offerings like Momodora (great), Cave Story (great but somewhat frustrating) or La Mulana (very complex and very frustrating). So I give it a thumbs down mainly as a warning since the current mostly very positive reviews seem to be misleading.
First of all, Sydney Hunter is a classical room based (no scrolling levels) action adventure. You enter levels from a pyramid that serves as a hub and which is also the only place where you can buy life potions. Leaving a level is only possible by finishing it, which always involves a boss fight. Within the level, you collect jewels, keys, special items and crystal skulls while avoiding traps, killing enemies and looking for some secrets. You start with only a whip but gain a spear (also used underwater) and a boomerang later. There are savepoints inside the level which also restore life energy (but no other items). Items like bombs and potions are stored in your inventory and can be used from there.
One of my main gripes with this game is that it's technically sub-par (even though it uses Unity as game engine). The keyboard setup is the most terrible I've ever seen and there are still fixed bindings. I.e. "B" in menus and "Space" in dialogues. The game also doesn't play as smooth as similar games and shows some artifacts when moving objects, probably due to lack of VSync. You can't seamlessly throw weapons while running (either stop or slowdown) but during jumping, which feels weird and crippling. You also can't move or attack while crouching or attack enemies above or below you.
Then it's obviously designed to look and sound like an 8bit console game but at least for the graphics, I don't get that half-hearted approach. I.e. either program a game for an 8bit console or for a PC but not something inbetween. Besides I doubt that things like the lava monster would have worked like this on a console.
Anyway, the odd color limitations and choices make the game look much worse than other retro games plus there are other things like lots of very small enemies (mice, bees). I'm not sure if the flickering and slowdown when throwing a spear is a simulation of an 8bit console limitation or simply bad programming, but it's horrible and inexcusable anyway.
There are dozens of other small implementation flaws or bad design decisions that make playing a bit of a drag. Like using a potion from your inventory leaves you with an empty item selection and you have to manually move to the next inventory slot. Great in boss battles. Or when catching a boomerang, the hero lifts his arm a bit and thus gets hit by spears etc. even while crouching. When even touching water, the spear is selected, which is usually the worst weapon choice. Flying enemies can move through walls but - for whatever reason - your spear is blocked by everything, so you need the boomerang for that. Generally hitboxes are weird.
Also, the persistence of the game is very odd. Most (but not all) bosses reappear when you enter a level again to e.g. search for skulls and diamonds you missed the 1st time. Even when re-entering a room, most enemies respawn and some don't. Bombs automatically respawn even while you're still in a room. In the potions shop it the pyramid, the offered potions seem to respawn if you leave the room or change to an empty slot. Annoyingly, you can't use potions (or bombs) in the pyramid, so you'd have to replay a level just to replace a small (green) potion with a big (yellow) one.
Then there are bugs like suddenly none of my weapons would work anymore in the boss fight with the lava monster. Or even after returning from a boss fight to the pyramid and "Saving" was shown before I quit, I was thrown back to before the boss fight when playing the next time.
While there is a savepoint before each boss-room, the lack of save game management and the inability to retreat often leaves you without potions at this save point and there is nothing you can do about it then to try to still beat that boss - which is the most frustrating part of this game. Plus, nearly all of the boss fights are simply badly designed. While the fights against the deities are just somewhat chaotic and uninspired, at least one of the gate keepers requires jumping from the right position at the correct split of the second for three or four times and jumping a tenth of a second too early or too late means instant death. Actually, I found only the fight against that giant eel, the lava monster and "Shadow Sydney" to be somewhat discussible design wise, but still: compared to proper boss fights in other games even these were pretty basic.
Honestly, at some point in the middle of the game I was so annoyed about some very long sections without a savepoint and having to do badly designed boss fights without potions that I decided to cheat a bit. So, as a hint for similarly frustrated people: Search for "HKEY_USERS\*\Software\CollectorVision Games\Sydney Hunter" in the registry (* is a wildcard), where you will find entries called "1_InventorySlot1_h*" to "1_InventorySlot10_h*" which represent the 10 normal item slots for the 1st savegame. Putting a 0x15 (21) in one of these entries gives you a yellow potion and 0x8 (8) gives you a bomb (for reference: 0x0a means empty and 0x12 is a green potion).
Without this bit of cheating, I'm unsure if I would have had the motivation to play this to the (somewhat silly) end.
Anyway, I don't feel it was really worth the time I invested in it or the asking price (I got it on sale though) and without a lot of polishing, I wouldn't recommend it even to people who are really into this kind of game.