Sword of Xolan is a free-to-play mobile action platformer by indie developer Alper Sarıkaya. The game follows Xolan (and his sword) on a journey to defeat the evil Borzandar, master of the Underworld, and his legions of monsters as well as to rescue Tulvir the wizard and the rest of the captured villagers.
The Lowdown
What’s immediately noticeable when playing Sword of Xolan is its art style. Its colorful, retro pixelated graphics are quite aesthetically pleasing and set the game up as a modern, mobile version of an old school, 80s platformer. There are dozens of different kinds monsters in the game, each with their own imaginative appearance and action animations. The game is set in three different environments – a bright summer forest, a darker winter forest, and a moonlit night forest – that give the setting life as well as show that you’re making progress in the game. Also, as levels are not just straight paths like Mario but have an up and down aspect as well, the camera has two-dimensional movement and is not just a locked side-scroller.
There are dozens of different kinds of monsters. Dozens!
Sword of Xolan’s in-game user interface includes just five buttons: left, right, jump, sword attack, and cast fireball. I felt that the locations of these buttons were quite natural, but if you happen to have fat or small fingers, are left-handed, or just want to play with an unorthodox setup, you can move them exactly to where you want on your screen with the settings menu. Holding your smartphone in this fashion with only movement buttons and two action buttons almost feels like holding an old Super Nintendo controller.
Combat is quite simple: sword attack swings Xolan’s sword in front of him, and cast fireball shoots a fireball in a straight line. Both do the same damage, but casting a fireball also costs one mana, so you can’t just spam it from a distance. Xolan starts with just three life and mana slots, but killing monsters and destroying barrels often drop extra lives and mana to replenish (which you’ll definitely need to survive).
“Adventure” mode follows the “story” (or lack thereof) and consists of thirty levels split into three acts. Each act ends in a boss fight mini-level, which are actually surprisingly difficult until you figure out the tricks to beat them. The normal levels follow a single, winding path chock-full of spike pits, retracting spikes, swinging blades, falling spike blocks, spinning razor blades, and monsters -- lots and lots of monsters. In each level there are three captured villagers to rescue as well as a treasure chest to unlock, but you’ll have to do a little digging as they’re often hidden behind walls or locked in rooms with misplaced keys. Really, you don’t need to save any villagers; you just need to complete the level and reach the next one. Each level usually takes about five to fifteen minutes, depending on how long it takes you to get the hang of the level, so the whole game mode should take you several hours to complete.
Seriously, lots of different sharp and pointy things.
“Challenge” mode is basically a time trial and consists of nine levels where you try to destroy all of the balloons as fast as possible. These levels have only spikes and other traps rather than the monsters of Adventure mode, but spikes can prove to be problem enough when trying to run as fast as you can. Each level is unlocked by rescuing increasing numbers of villagers in Adventure mode, and completing each trial in faster times yields greater amounts of gold. This game mode can be quite frustratingly difficult to beat (especially if you don’t have the Game Card that gives you extra time), so you should get quite a bit of play time in it.
Or are they sacks? Either way, damn them.
Gold is the game’s currency and can be collected by killing monsters, destroying barrels, rescuing villagers, and opening treasure chests in Adventure mode as well as beating times in Challenge mode. Gold can be used to unlock the ten Game Cards, which are passive bonuses – such as giving an extra mana slot, hints for hidden places, or an extra five seconds on Challenge levels – that affect both game modes. I ended up buying the last Game Card right before my final boss fight, so it’s quite balanced in that regard.
Gotta catch 'em all.
Sword of Xolan is free to play, but it comes with ads. The ads are for other games on the app store and only pop up after restarting a level, so they aren’t too annoying as you can view them as sort of like loading screens. You’ll probably accidentally miss the tiny ‘X’ in the corner a few times, though, which will open up the app store, so if you grow tired of them, you can make a $0.99 in-app purchase to remove all ads. I assume the game was initially $0.99, but with the inclusion of ads it allowed the game to be free to play, which I think is a nice tradeoff. Kudos to the developer.
Gerrick's Thoughts
Sword of Xolan’s colorful art style, simple controls, and enjoyably difficult gameplay all make it the fun game that it is. There’s plenty of replayability in trying to find all of the villagers and treasure chests (some of which you may never find) in Adventure mode as well as trying to beat the best times in Challenge mode. I got at least half a dozen hours playing this game, and yet there are still some poor villagers crying themselves to sleep in their hidden cages I couldn’t find.
Jayna here was one of the lucky ones.
The game is somewhere between casual and hardcore. You can’t just not pay attention to what you’re doing because you might run into some spikes or a monster might fly in and kill you, causing you to have to completely restart the level, which can be frustrating when you realize you were almost done. Plus, it’s pretty difficult even when you’re really focused – expect to die many times per level. But it still has a casual feel, and you don’t always become too angry when you die because you often learn a new trick to beat the level, and then winning is that much more satisfying. (There’s also the whole “no story” bit that adds to the casual quality, but more on that below).
One small thing about this game I noticed is that the difficulty does not really get increasingly difficult in a linear fashion as would be expected but rather sort of depends on the level. Act 3 is harder than Act 1 with stronger monsters, more spikes, and more difficult obstacles, but the levels within each act seem to be in no particular order. Sometimes you’ll keep dying over and over then finally finish only to realize that you missed a villager or two, but on the next level you’ll fly right through it and find all of the collectibles in plain sight. It’s a very minor complaint where I'm kinda nitpicking, but it’s there nonetheless.
The movement also has some minor problems. If you click the left button, you’ll usually face and move left, and the right button has the opposite effect. Sometimes, however, if you’re facing one way but want to quickly face and move the opposite way, clicking the movement button moves the character in the new direction but does not face them as well, so you’ll move backwards. This proved to be a bit annoying in Challenge mode when you often have to quickly turn around to shoot at balloons that are both in front of and behind you. I will say, however, that the buttons are very responsive – if you click a button, then you’ll perform that action.
Who were these guys, again?
As I mentioned before, Adventure mode’s story is completely lacking. You’re only told what’s going on at the beginning of the first level and the end of the last boss fight. I’ll be honest, I completely forgot who Tulvir the wizard was when I saved him from Borzandar (whom I also forgot), but I had a really good time getting there. Saving villagers and killing monsters isn’t even necessary to beat the game. Just make your way through each level to reach Borzandar, and then kill him. But then again, Sword of Xolan isn’t really about the story – it’s about the gameplay, and that’s something that it really excels at.
Overall, I’d give Sword of Xolan a 4 out of 5.
Now go play it.
