Megabyte Punch was a title I stumbled upon in another game bundle. I had seen it show up on Steam during a time I was having health issues and passed on it. When it showed up on GOG I also passed as it was failed on selling the concept to me.

Which is a shame. Megabyte Punch is a platformer genre game with elements of Smash Brothers and a little bit of a Metroidvania. And it is absolutely brilliant.

For an indie game, there's an above average level of polish to this one. Controls on both keyboard and gamepad feel tight and balanced. I did switch to my dPad over the usual KB+M for this one as it is very slightly more optimised for it. I had a minor issue where button-7 refused to be mapped to anything but the Menu control, it didn't take long to map my mind around it but still got in my way.

There's a decent story to this one, you play as a self aware soldier of a computer program who is summoned to investigate an attack and defend your village. The village acts as a hub where you can interact with various characters over the course of the 6 levels.

There's no actual questing next the main one, but NPCs will change their response over the days it takes place in as the story unfolds. It's nice to run around and read what they're thinking, even if it has no effect on the game otherwise.

The only real interaction here aside from chatting is the Shop. Each level it updates what it has in stock, but as you can replay previous levels if you don' have the money (in the form of bits) you can go back and stock up until you do.

Finally you have your own home, where you can equip and customise your character.

Shop items and enemy drops are a large part of the game. Rather than picking up weapons and items directly you pick up dropped parts and swap out chunks of your own robotic body.

These parts provide small stat boosts and a different visual look and can be swapped out at any time. Opening the menu to do so does not pause the game but the change applies instantly after selecting, so it would still be best to wait until you are in a safe area.

You're limited to the amount of ones you can pick up per the three rounds of each level. Upon reaching the end of a round all collected parts are sent to your home storage in the village and do not follow you into the next round. Once unlocked you can download it as many times as you want. As you have to start each level on Round 1, it is advisable to check what you have collected before you move on in case you collected something you may find useful.

Along with the stat bonuses some parts apply a special attack. These attacks can be activated by standing still or moving in a direction and activating the special button. Combining parts allows you to combine different abilities and have them activated in different ways.

For instance one early unlock is a drill part. Applying this to a move-forward direction will drill forward, or on an angle if jumping... But not directly down. Applying it to the down direction will allow you to drill directly downward, but not forward. Since you can apply drills to both arms, you can have both options, at the loss of selecting other abilities.

Unused parts, or parts you have previously collected can be converted into bits to spend later.

I mentioned that there is a metroidvania element to this game, and while this is true, it is very very light. These abilities will help accessing various areas but there tends to be an alternate route on the levels I played and I could clear the whole round with what I had on had.

If there is ever a sequel to this game, expanding on this concept would be nice but it should not be considered something missing from the game.

Finally, there are colour capsules you can collect that allow you to skin your character into preset colour themes. There's no bonus to this aside from collecting them all.

Which leads to the combat itself. Reasonably fast paced and brawler genre, you'll have your character jumping and punching around the whole level at the various enemies you encounter. You tend to only encounter a few at once and will want to take them out away from groups as it is easy to get overwhelmed.

Punch, jumpkick, slash, drill, shoot. Whatever part you have connected expands what you can do. Some enemies are more susceptible to different attacks than others and they do give warning before launching larger attacks.

Enemies explore in various ways with nice powerful bangs, and building up the damage and hitting them hard will send them flying through the level and demolishing parts of the geometry. This is very satisfying and happens at a rare enough rate to not become boring through overuse.

At various points parts of the level lock down and you are required to defeat many minor enemies or a few individual stronger ones. They're not mini-boss quality but do help to break up the length of the level.

Winning these lockdowns awards you with a checkpoint to restart from if you do die during the round. It is possible to backtrack and unlock one near the start of the level once you have reached the end, but as enemies do not respawn it should not take long to get to the end.

Which leads you into the actual boss battles after three rounds. If you've ever played Nintendo's 'Smash Bros' games, this is that on the PC. And it works very very well.

You face one large enemy on a floating platform and have to wear them down to the point where you can knock them over the edge or just build up enough damage percentage that a powerful special attack will kick them into the black void at the maps edges.

After knocking them off a few times the round ends with your victory and an additional weapon unique to the boss. Thankfully if you do lose, you don't have to do all three rounds again and can warp directly to the boss.

I only played the original N64 and Wii releases of Smash Brothers so my memory is just a little fuzzy on them, but I feel this segment on the PC captures it brilliantly. The game does support local 4 player co-op which I'd never really get a chance to test out, and there is a challenge mode to the game outside of the campaign with expands upon it. Considering how well it works in solo mode, it should be worth checking out if you like the game it takes inspiration from.

Megabyte Punch was last updated around Nov 2013 and the game can be considered stable and complete.

I really would recommend this one as the level of polish is high, the art style and options for the character give a lot of variety and the soundtrack has an enjoyable semi-retro electronic vibe to it.

While I can't say anything on the split screen or co-op modes due to not playing them. The Solo mode is an utter blast with enough to unlock and battle against.

Game Acquisition: Purchased on Sale (Bundle Stars)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 14 March 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

OS: XP or higher
Processor: Core 2 Duo 2GHz+
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 256 MB Video Memory
DirectX: Version 9.0
Storage: 400 MB available space