Aggelos review - a brilliant if brief 2D platformer

You've probably played a game like Aggelos before.

You might have played one recently - Owl Boy, Wonder Boy, and Hollow Knight are three recent examples - or perhaps, like me, you might have played one the first time around, too, before such games were really known as Metroidvanias and there was no such thing as internet guides (or any guides, for that matter - bless my dad for letting me abuse the Nintendo Hotline). I grew up loving and loathing those kinds of games in equal measure, and not much has changed - anything that requires timing or jumping remains the bane of my existence - but as much as I'm cynical about the many titles trying to jump on this retro bandwagon forged from little more than manufactured nostalgia, I fell for Aggelos and its wholesome charm in a way I hadn't quite expected.

If this 2D adventure flew under your radar when it released on PC last year - that's right, it's been out for the best part of a year on PC already - you're not alone. Now out on Nintendo Switch, too, Aggelos (AG-gelos? Ag-GEL-os? Agg-el-os?! HELP) is a bright, bold, and respectful homage to those games we grew up playing, the games I frequently quit part-way through because no amount of Twister-ing my fat little fingers could quite pull off the jump, dash, downward-thrust, bounce, dash-dash gymnastics required to progress.

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