About The Game

Players take on the role of an enigmatic protagonist named Goldman, who arrives at a vast and mysterious archipelago with a singular, grim mission: to find and eliminate a "Deity." The story is described as a "vibrant yet dark adventure" that weaves together ancient fables, myths, and legends into a narrative that subverts traditional fairy-tale expectations. The game is a 2D platformer that prioritizes precision and ingenuity over brute-force memorization. Goldman’s primary tool is a cane that can be upgraded with new parts to unlock traversal abilities and combat techniques (with pogo hopping gameplay that brings back memories of DuckTales). While it features a vast, interconnected world, the developers have stated a goal of minimizing the "dull backtracking" often associated with the Metroidvania genre. The game's dev is attempting to avoid clichés by ensuring no two landscapes or rooms are alike, with every visual effect and character carefully planned (and from what I saw in the demo, it looks incredible).

History and Inspiration

The defining characteristic of The Eternal Life of Goldman is its commitment to the "most difficult path possible": classic frame-by-frame animation. Every frame is meticulously hand-drawn and colored, a labor-intensive process intended to recapture the "magic" of first seeing a high-quality 16-bit platformer.  Visually, the game draws from the aesthetic of classic European comics—with many comparing it to an interactive Tintin adventure—and mid-century cartoons. Mechanically, it pays homage to the precision and discovery found in titles like the original DuckTales, but updated with modern responsiveness.

Critical Discourse and Player Feedback

On subreddits like r/metroidvania and r/gaming, the animation is the primary topic of conversation. Users have described the demo as "stunning artistically," noting that it genuinely feels like playing inside a high-budget animated film. The discourse around the game’s narrative is more polarized. While some Reddit users praise the "well-written and original" voice acting and dialogue, others found the demo to be a bit "wordy," with some feeling the NPC interactions contained too much filler or "cringe" humor. There is an ongoing debate about its "Metroidvania" tag on Steam. Some purists argue that because it minimizes backtracking, it leans closer to a traditional action-adventure platformer, while others are simply happy for a "Metroid-adjacent" game that respects the player's time. The music, composed by Yasunori Nishiki (Octopath Traveler), has received high praise for adding to the game's rich atmosphere with an intentional, handcrafted feel.

My Hands-On Impressions

The Eternal Life of Goldman has a demo available on Steam and Xbox. I played on Xbox Series S, and Goldman looks incredible. The demo opens with an animated intro that pretty much looks straight out of a cartoon, and transitions smoothly to the 2D playing field with the eponymous Goldman being airdropped into the action. 

The animation and graphics of the game itself look incredible, and it's probably one of, if not the most, incredible looking hand-animated 2D side scrolling games I've seen to date. The music is not as impressive as the graphics, but it does a very competent job at supporting the action, and clearly does not seem to be a major focus (basically what I'm saying is it sounds great but is clearly meant to be background music - this isn't a Yuzo Koshiro game where music is at the forefront). 

Gameplay-wise it has a very interesting take on the "Ducktales-pogostick" style of gameplay, albeit without the ability to strike items with your cane (at least not in the demo). It has multiple upgrades to the cane, swapping out the handle, and the center section and the lower section to enable different abilities. For example, the first ability to get in the demo is a hook top for the cane so the Goldman can grab onto rings floating in the air, and grab environmental objects to interact with them. Next he gets an upgrade to the center section of the cane to make his pogo jump even higher, but when he gets to a section with spikes on the ceiling, he needs to swap it out for the standard jump to avoid pogoing into the spikes. It seems very well thought out and executed. 

As Goldman defeats enemies and opens chests, out pops a slew of gold coins and treasure to collect, and as you player you have to actively try and collect it. There is no super magnet feature (at least not in the demo) that makes it all fly towards you, and it can be easy to leave some behind if you aren't mindful.

In fact every part of the demo seems excellent, except for the narrative bits, which seem a bit odd but I can see what the game is trying to accomplish. In the demo, after you beat the first boss, it switches to a narrative between a young boy and an older female caregiver. It's clear she is reading the story to him, and from her comments it seems like he may be ill or generally bedridden. It reminded me very much of the concept behind The Princess Bride, where the grandfather is reading a story to his grandson who has stayed home sick from school. The only issue though, is that the caregiver in Goldman seems openly annoyed at the boy, and doesn't seem to enjoy reading the story to him, nor his excitement at the story. Perhaps the demo drops the player into the game later on in the story, and there is an opening cinema or something that better sets the stage, but the way its presented in the demo it seems quite odd, and I thought rather off putting. This was easily the weakest part of the demo, and I hope it seems clearer and better presented in the full release.

You can watch my gameplay from The Eternal Life of Goldman demo in the video below: