Dojoran

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Dojoran is a challenging Platformer released on PC in 2020 and ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2021. In this game, players take the role of a frog trying to get through a deadly obstacle course in one piece.

The presentation in Dojoran is decidedly retro, using monochrome 2D pixel art. There’s some decent detail in the environments and characters, but… well, without even grayscale to work with (it’s just black and white), there’s not a heck of a lot of detail you can get out of the visuals. These visuals are backed by a chiptune soundtrack that’s fine, but gets repetitive before too long.

While the visuals here are somewhat primitive, the gameplay is pretty decent, with players given both a jump and wall-jump, as well as the ability to get a few other single-use abilities by grabbing them in the game’s levels, such as dropping an apple to double-jump (not sure how that’s supposed to work, but whatever).

Players will need to make good use of these abilities, though – this game’s levels are extremely hard, and players will die a lot here. On the bright side, the pacing here is excellent, and Dojoran does a good job of instilling players with the “just one more try” sorta’ mentality you want in a tough game like this.

Given how challenging it is, and how it doesn’t do anything truly ground-breaking within the genre, Dojoran isn’t likely to appeal to everyone, but for $5, players looking for a challenging Platformer with a retro aesthetic might find this game worth a look. Just be prepared to die a lot. Or perhaps I should say, “croak”.

tl;dr – Dojoran is a challenging Platformer where players take the role of a frog trying to get through a dangerous obstacle course. This is a tough but fair take on the genre with a monochrome retro aesthetic, and while it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, players looking for a tough-as-nails retro Platformer for an inexpensive $5 will want to give this one a look.

Grade: C+

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