About The Game

The narrative thrusts players back into a grim, dark fantasy world where an ancient, cosmic evil has once again broken its shackles to threaten the realm of mortals. As the titular barbarian hero, Beholgar, players must venture through cursed forests, crumbling catacombs, and obsidian dungeons to hunt down the dark sorcerers anchoring this malevolent force. The plot leans heavily into classic, unapologetic sword-and-sorcery pulp, utilizing brooding atmosphere and minimalist dialogue to establish a bleak world where strength, steel, and survival are the only laws that matter.

Mechanically, the game functions as a punishingly deliberate 2D action-platformer and metroidvania that rewards caution over reckless aggression. Combat requires precise spacing and timing, forcing players to carefully manage their melee swings, heavy weapons, and limited ranged magic against aggressive, hard-hitting mythical beasts. Progression follows a traditional non-linear structure, where exploring hidden chambers yields essential passive upgrades, health expansions, and new traversal abilities, like double jumps and air-dashes, that gradually unpack the intricately interconnected map. True to its retro soul, the game features rigid movement, high-stakes platforming over instant-death hazards, and intense multi-phase boss encounters that demand strict pattern memorization.

History and Inspiration

Beholgar 2 is a direct sequel to Beholgar, released in 2023, and serves as a nostalgic love letter to the late-80s / early-90s golden age of dark fantasy action games. While its gameplay seems heavily influenced by iconic classics like Castlevania, Rastan, and Ghosts 'n Goblins, its graphic style takes a page out of Donkey Kong Country's book. The visuals are prerendered 3D models converted into 2D sprites, which gives the game a unique look and very smooth animation. This is a distinct change from the first Beholgar, which was clearly a 2D pixel art game with traditional sprites. While the style is technically similar to Donkey Kong Country, the characters sometimes look like the photo realistic characters of the 90s in games like Pitfighter and Mortal Kombat. From an audio perspective, the game's music actually reminds me a lot of classic CD games, like you would find on the Sega CD. Each audio track seems to be a complete piece of music that plays, completes and then loops; it's a very nostalgic treatment. 

Critical Discourse and Player Feedback

Community and critical discussion surrounding the sequel has centered heavily on its uncompromising fidelity to old-school difficulty design. On Steam forums and retro-gaming subreddits, the game has been widely praised by genre purists who celebrate its tight hitboxes, rewarding exploration, and atmospheric presentation, which many note captures the authentic "arcade feel" better than most modern throwbacks. However, the discourse also highlights a distinct mechanical divide; more casual players have expressed frustration over the rigid jumping physics, lack of modern quality-of-life features like granular checkpoints, and a steep early-game difficulty curve. While the combat variety and striking pixel art are universally lauded, the conversation often debates whether the game’s strict adherence to retro friction acts as an immersive feature or an archaic barrier to entry.

Beholgar released on Steam earlier than consoles, on December 1st of 2025, and currently sits at 75% recommended across 60 ratings. On the PlayStation store, Beholgar II has a 4.06/5 average, from 35 total ratings. Xbox has only 5 ratings so far and the feedback is very mixed.

Hands-on Impressions

I only played the first Beholgar briefly a while ago, and I didn't really know what to expect from its sequel. Neither game has a ton of story up front, but honestly I appreciate a bit of brevity from video game stories, unless the story is absolutely incredible (and most aren't). The first thing that struck me was the graphical style. 

It uses prerendered 3D characters that have been translated into 2D sprites, much like Donkey Kong Country on the SNES back in the day, however the way the characters were created and rendered also reminds me of the graphic style of games like Pitfighter or Mortal Kombat where real actors were photographed and then converted into sprites. The game also has a cool retro-filter you can enable which gives it a dirty-CRT style look, which I used through most of my playthrough. In general, the game looks really good, in a very deliberate old school style. 

The audio is also really well done, and the tracks remind me a lot of classic Sega CD games. The action is your typical action adventure platformer metroidvania, with certain paths locked behind ability unlocks, and exploration rewarded with special items and secrets. The combat is smooth and mostly feels good, but the gameplay and control itself is where the game starts to run into issues. 

This game is still a bit janky, and has quite a few glitches and bugs that will hopefully be ironed out in future updates (although you never know). I had the game crash on me at least once, and in the final stage, accessing the map is glitched. Normally, when you access the map, the screen goes black and you only see the map itself (typical in most games and throughout the earlier stages in the game). During the final stage, when I would bring up the map, it simply displayed in the background, with all the foreground characters and elements still visible, which made it very hard to properly use.

The other issue for some people might be that the game is relatively easy from a combat and gameplay standpoint. Most of the bosses are unlikely to give you much trouble. The bigger issue I had, and what extended my overall play time, was I got lost many times and couldn't figure out where to go. Some of the unlocks weren't intuitive to me, and more than once I found myself unable to figure out where to go next. Eventually I figured it out and rolled credits on the game, but I found myself frustrated more than once, and unable to determine the right path forward.

You can watch my beginning gameplay in the video below: