Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge (v2022.03.04)

A petty social-media insult sparks an interstellar revenge mission in this deliberately ridiculous, old-school action platformer. Serena S, a celebrated galactic adventurer with absolutely no patience for online trolls, crosses hostile planets and space installations to settle a personal score with the Space Prince. The tone is loud, crude, and cheerfully juvenile, balancing sci-fi melodrama with a knowingly silly plot that treats every minor grievance like a universe-ending crisis. Ultionus: A Tale of Petty Revenge wears its retro influences proudly, aiming for the brisk, colorful energy of early-’90s computer action games rather than modern cinematic spectacle.

Serena runs, jumps, fires, and blasts her way through seven compact stages packed with enemies, hazards, elevated routes, and screen-filling bosses. The controls emphasize responsive platforming and constant shooting, with weapon pickups and movement challenges keeping the action from becoming a simple march to the right. Levels reward alert players who learn enemy patterns, time their jumps around traps, and make the most of limited space when projectiles start filling the screen. Difficulty comes from the classic arcade-style demand for precision and persistence, so deaths feel like part of the process of learning a stage’s tricks rather than an interruption to a sprawling RPG progression system.

Its biggest strength is commitment to the era it celebrates: dense pixel-art backgrounds, exaggerated character portraits, chunky explosions, and a driving chiptune score from Jake “Virt” Kaufman give every encounter personality. The game channels the spirit of titles such as Halloween Harry, Duke Nukem 2, and Phantis/Game Over II without pretending to be anything more serious than a focused retro romp. Players who enjoy short, replayable platform shooters with a crude sense of humor will find plenty to like, especially if they value mechanical clarity over elaborate systems. Newcomers can enjoy its straightforward design, while veterans of DOS-era action games are most likely to appreciate how faithfully it captures that specific home-computer arcade feel.