Adventuring is tough, but who would have thought you’d get lost on your way to your very first quest? While taking a shortcut through a dark forest, novice adventurer Naru has a chance encounter that flings her into a one-hundred-year-old mystery filled with strange creatures, mysterious individuals, a haunted chateau, and a cursed… duck? Help Naru fight, climb, jump, swim, and explore over half a dozen vibrant and enchanting areas in an open and interconnected map filled with enemies, puzzles, and rich characters. Discover that shortcuts in life are rarely short, things are seldom what they seem, and self-worth will make you more powerful than level-grinding ever could.

Now, take up your magical sword, the Runebuster, unravel the curse of the graveyard duck, and make it to your first quest on time!

Slime Buster Naru is a retro-style action RPG sometimes referred to as a “metroidvania.” Inspired by a host of classic games like Kid Icarus, The Goonies II, Rygar, Faxanadu, Castlevania (of course), and many more, you’ll find a game filled with brightly colored, hand-drawn pixel art, a nostalgic VRC6 style chiptune soundtrack & sound effects, and painstakingly responsive and intuitive controls. At the same time, Slime Buster Naru is not limited by the technology of the games from the 80’s and 90’s from which it was inspired. Where appropriate, some rules have been broken to improve the game while preserving the nostalgic retro-feel. For instance, sound effects do not cause certain music channels to drop, sprites do not flicker or slow even when there are dozens on the screen, and additive lighting and multiple parallax background effects are beyond what older consoles could have accomplished. All of this is done with great care to capture the feeling of gaming in the decades when a golden age of great classics were just being born. At its heart, Slime Buster Naru is a classic homage to great games that made us all love gaming. It has no specific gimmick to try and stand out, but instead enshrines these most important game aspects: super-tight gameplay, art, music, storytelling, a lot of love, and, most importantly, fun.

As a personal note, Slime buster Naru is a solo-dev game. In other words, I’m developing this game almost entirely by myself. This isn’t my first game, but it is one of the first I’ve done solo. As such, I know very well that it would never see the light of day if not for all of your support, feedback, and enthusiasm. For that, I can’t thank you enough. Please continue to follow along on this journey as I develop the first of what I hope are a series of games featuring our heroine Naru. Let’s have some fun!