A downloadable game

Free-to-play early stages for Magenta Horizon

Note that the game is already released on Steam. The Steam demo provides a much better experience when it comes to playing this game AS A FIRST EXPERIENCE. 

However, I also think preserving the past and seeing how the game changed over time is important, so I decided to not update the demo build in itch.io. After all, most people would play it on Steam anyway. This place can have an old build to provide a different value. 


Magenta Horizon is a fast-paced 2D action platformer game that is heavily inspired by Hollow Knight and Devil May Cry.

If you have played the games mentioned below, you will likely enjoy this game. 

  • Hollow Knight 
  • Nioh Series
  • Ninja Gaiden Series
  • Devil May Cry Series
  • Ultrakill

  You play as Gretel, a reaper in this purgatory-like afterlife. After being exiled from her sanctuary for 200 years, she is freed from her sarcophagus by a wandering soul named Archibald. Seeking purpose in this afterlife she decides to guide Archibald back to the sanctuary she was long exiled from. The journey won't be easy however as the path is fraught with all manner of grotesque demons starving for souls.

  • Destroy the enemies with an arsenal of ranged skills that can be chained with each other. 
  • Juggle or pull the enemies to simultaneously attack and position yourself.
  • Throw healing bombs to turn them into living health potion containers. Hit them to regain health and keep fighting.
  • Slay the enemies swiftly and efficiently to gain style points. 

Magenta Horizon Act 1 features:

  • Several melee & movement skills that are opened from the start
  • 6 Exploration-based stages, 5 Boss stages (and one of them is hidden)
  • 15 18 normal enemies and 5 bosses
  • 4 ranged skills and 10 necklace pieces that can change your play style
  • 3 4 difficulties
  • A good amount of replayability 



Come join in the Magenta Horizon Dev Server and let me know what you thought of it or if you have any suggestions for the game:

https://discord.gg/QgbJ7ZaFNh

Or follow the game on twitter to stay up to date on the game's development:

https://twitter.com/BaekMaddison

If you liked the music of this game, you can buy the album on Bandcamp:

https://maddisonbaek.bandcamp.com/album/magenta-horizon-act-1-official-soundtrac...

The main game can be purchased here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109060/Magenta_Horizon/

Download

Download
Magenta Horizon Act1 Itch.zip 832 MB

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Comments

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(This is just a tiny rant but I do really like the game.)

The train boss is very annoying, even on Normal difficulty. The slam attack hardly has a windup and the hitboxes just feel too big/last too long. The tip to do the back attack doesnt really help cause there's projectiles crawling on the ground every time it does the slam attack. And the charge attack would be much more bearable if I could hook through the smokestack or if the hitbox was smaller. Also when it turns around I immediately get hit by it's face, get knocked backwards, it turns again, and I get hit and knocked back again.

I really enjoyed the Wraith boss, I still died a ton but it felt way more fair when I died. Even then I was eager to try again against it. With the Train, I feel like I'm just being juggled around. Again, I'm just nagging. Honestly the boss is fine, its just the reaction time needed to dodge things feels way more demanding than earlier parts. I did beat it on the first try on the lowest two difficulties but I feel like the jump from those to Normal is a bit much.

Like you noticed, trying to react to the attacks as they happen is very difficult. But Blucher's AI picks attacks based almost exclusively on your position, so you should be able to anticipate what's coming in advance and already be ready to dodge before it starts. (Slams when you're in front, turnaround hit when you're behind, smokestack slam when you're above) For the charge a good strategy is to walljump off the sides of the arena, you can also angle your hook attack upwards to gain some height.


Here's a video of the fight on Reaper, hopefully this helps some. I'd be happy to give more tips if needed.

Hi,

Please compile your game for Linux. Thank you.

(+2)

Played for ~60 hours, SSS rank on hardest available difficulty for all levels. Runs here.

Really, really solid piece of work, especially for a game with 2/3rds of its planned content still forthcoming. Considering the game is free, there is no reason not to try it if you're an action game fan.

Magenta Horizon holds a deep reverence for two of the most fundamental pillars of action games: positioning and dynamism. Hollow Knight's influence on the movement (and the game in general) is obvious, but the addition of a diagonal dive and a hook attack that pulls you through enemies makes things significantly more interesting than simply jumping and pogoing around. DMC-like strings with various useful properties also add much-needed nuance and agency to the ground combat. The tension between safety/mobility in the air and options/damage potential on the ground informs almost every decision you make, and you'll find yourself constantly evaluating which is better suited for the moment.

A varied and volatile enemy roster puts this into context, and each disrupts you in different ways with melee attacks, speed, projectiles, or sheer size. The small helicopters are a favorite of mine: their simple attacks aren't much threat, but their spinning propellers will hit you on contact, making aerial getaways from more oppressive enemies deceptively challenging. Arenas filling up with hordes of different foes, all acting independently, gives rise to the delightful controlled chaos that so many of the action game greats are known for. Bosses are also pleasantly dynamic, with varied attack patterns and a Souls/Monster Hunter-style stagger system to keep things fresh. Once you beat the middle difficulty, give the highest a shot, it's where the game truly shines. Each encounter is completely redone, with tough enemies from the last stage suddenly appearing in the very first. Some of the best and most creative fights are found here, as the dev starts to go wild with cramped arenas, oppressive environmental hazards, enemy spawning setups, and synergistic compositions.

Each of the subweapons in the game are distinct, and have multiple situationally useful properties rather than explicitly hard countering anything. Creating the spike in midair will slam you to the ground (invaluable for movement), and the boomerang can be aimed in different trajectories to deal general damage over a wide area or stagger fliers quickly. Some even combine with each other: for example, timing your spike to skewer a boomerang creates a stationary spinning blade that deals massive DPS to anything in reach. A la Alien Soldier, each weapon can be assigned to one or more of 8 possible slots, and each slot has its own meter. The frightening levels of lethality you can achieve by maximizing this brings combat to a blistering speed, especially in later stages where tough arenas reward clean speedkilling.

Artwork and music are both obvious standouts that anyone can appreciate, and lend the game a distinct character. Pinks and purples cover otherworldly vistas, and the enemy menagerie is both delightfully creative and a treat to watch in motion. The progressive metal soundtrack is also fantastic, one of the best in recent memory.

There are definitely still some kinks to be worked out. As a new player, especially one without high-level action game experience, the initial experience is extremely overwhelming with the amount of options and movement you have. Almost nothing can be canceled out of, which works great as a design decision but feels punishing early on. UI needs some polish, and can feel cheap and awkward to navigate. Early level design is both needlessly confusing to traverse (especially since there's no map) and doesn't stand out much in terms of creative fights. Luckily, both of these improve as you get further in. Bugs pop up every so often since the game's still in heavy development, but in my experience these rarely affected gameplay. You can report any you find to the dev and he'll usually fix it quickly. The necklace system (equippables with playstyle-altering buffs) simply doesn't have enough options yet to provide meaningful tradeoffs. The game is also a bit light on content currently, as expected, but what's there is high quality.

Overall, I'm extremely impressed at the level of achievement here so far, especially in the context of a solo dev project. I can't wait to see where the project goes next, I only see things getting better from here.

(+4)

To all of y'all penguin lovers, the game runs perfectly well under WINE. No additional set up was required on Manjaro,

What configuration/Wine version did you use? Its not working for me

wine-staging from the official repository. Make sure you got the dependencies installed: https://www.gloriouseggroll.tv/how-to-get-out-of-wine-dependency-hell/

 If it still doesn't work, launch it with command line, and see if there's any errors.

Wow, thank you! This would explain why Bottles/Lutris/Steam sometimes give different errors. 

Reject gUI, return to terminal

(+1)

glad to help another penguinbro👉😎👉

(+2)

This game is pretty much a perfect example of an innovative indie Stylish Action game. I love ALL of it. The artstyle, the combat, the platforming even. There is just one thing that I have to say against it, which is that the game heavily lacks cancels to use, unless there's some obvious method to them I'm missing. They would enhance the game by a lot.

(+1)

 With the recent patch, you can easily cancel out the normal attack strings (except the first strike) by jumping or dashing. Just remind you that you can only do that after she started to swing the weapon. You can give it a shot again! 

(+3)

Here's my review {Play this game it rules!}

This game is so awesome!  There is so much that is amazing here, and playing this game made me  happy. The final game will definetly be an instant purchase for me.Playing this game it is immediately obvious that the developer is a hardcore action game  fan, and I think this game holds up with the other great action games I've played so far.      I have only one complaint, and I'll leave it after my waves and waves of praise.  

My favorite component is the soundtrack, which is just full of pure bangers.  I love how the music transitions from exploration to combat, especially with the spike of more metal as a you get into a combat.   I consistently listen to the ost for this game, and get boosted by it's energy.   it is one of only two soundtracks I've purchased.   

The base mechanics lead to an excellent combat system.   The movement options are really nice.  This has everything I enjoy about hollow knight combat,  but with the addition of a couple exceptionally interesting moves and surprising amount of depth in variants for each verb to elevate this to a new level.  I'll specifically call out two moves which are incredible and make this game standout a lot. 

Dive attack:  Having a diagonal  downwards dive shakes things up a bunch. It takes a bit to get used too, but once you have a good feel for it {and there are some neat platforming sections that help you get used to it}, combat is injected with this incredible sense of motion.   It serves as a great way to leave a pogoing in the air state, either to be incredibly aggressive or as a panicked escape.   It also encourages more horizontal movement in general to complement an aerial strategy which makes combat more exciting.   

Hook-dash:  {a straight hook attack that dashes you through an enemy or obstacle  on contact}.    This move is a beautiful work of genius. It's shade dash's {from hollow knight} cooler sibling. There's quite a bit of skill to utilizing it because a few moments of wind up {to launch the hook}, so it's not an instant escape tool.  Yet the nuances of this move make it loop back around to something that you can use slightly  *before* you're in danger and need to move immediately.     I love the momentum you get from using this, and again like the dive attack it encourages horizontal movement across the battle in a great way.   Then on top of having this your character still has a normal dash that can also go through enemies,   I like how this move takes more skill to use, and is a massive repositioning + evasive maneuver.

 The best part is that the enemy design is fantastic and properly challenges and complements  this move set.   The above mentioned hook maneuver has certain enemies that are immune to it.  Yet this is incredibly intuitive and always 100% obvious from visuals {long lads can not be hooked through,  but any thin section of any enemy can always be hooked through}.   Speaking of well-done visual design,  there are helicopters  in this game that just jaw droopingly genius in how their  design naturally makes them immune to a certain type of attack {pogos}.  Each enemy justifies their existence, and creates a certain type of pressure and challenge. Yet these enemies aren't used in isolation , but together in crazy and hectic battles where you have to manage the diversity and scale of problems from tons of enemies all at once.   There's quite a few severe difficulty spikes, yet you feel awesome constantly and get huge rushes of satisfaction from managing to clear a chaotic arena or tough boss.    The main gameplay here is so strong that I find myself sometimes just opening magenta horizon, doing a random stage, and quickly feeling awesome. 

The visual style here is weird in a really exciting and awesome  way. I specifically love the vibrant use of colors to create the strange setting.  Too many games lack a nice use of color, and that along with some other personal taste has made generally uninterested in the type of setting this game has, but the art style of this game sells me on it. Instead of playing the game despite grotesque things that aren't really my vibe, I was excited to see what strange and twisted thing would be next.  Some of the stages are sweet surprises that really standout too .    

Now for my *one* complaint:  the checkpoint system sucks and fills me with an indescribable rage.   I hate constantly having to redo sections.   It really deflates my enjoyment of the game to have to constantly go through battles again and again to get back to the actual part that I want to be playing after I die.  The design of the system here is so ridiculous that I could often save time by just restarting the whole level and going for a more optimal checkpoint usage.  Sometimes I'll get aggravated with the game  and stop solely due to this, but I always return eventually excited to play.   The boss battles are a highlight for me because you respawn right outside of the beginning of the fight.   If I could play this game in a  cheat mode where  there were checkpoints before every fight I would be very happy.  

Also to not end on negativity, I'll throw in some more lightning round praise

The ranged skills are cool, and there's tons of cool interactions and uses of them that I'm still discovering new stuff for after finishing act 1

The stage select is handy -> especially because you can select difficulty for playing that stage  and also  still have your characters unlocks

The hard post-game difficulty is interesting and well designed {so far it seems like too much for me but I am enjoying exploring it}

The bosses are chaotic and aggressive which makes them much more interesting than 50% of video game bosses.  I can tell that the developer is a fellow GPZ {hollow knight boss} enjoyer.  

Finally this game is  incredibly impressive as a solo passion  project.   From studying game dev I'm intimately aware of so many pain points and have a big appreciation  for the difficulty of creating a game. So by default I have a respect for any solo game, but this holds up to my actual favorites on top of that, so it is even more impressive.  To be honest I idolize the developer a bit, and put them on the same pedestal of all the other monumental developers and games which inspire me to work to get to that level.   [Also it should be noted that they are a cool person who I enjoy talking too, and supporting this game is incredibly emotionally satisfying]

I forgot to mention that the healing bombs are one of the best healing mechanics I've seen in games.

I also forgot to mention that the default keyboard and mouse controls are really good.  As a keyboard and mouse gamer I feel understood

(+2)

rebiew    of  Magenta Horizon (act 1)

I should preface this with saying that even though I have finished this game on its intended difficulty you should keep in mind that at the time of writing this, I have not yet played the two of the biggest listed inspirations for it, (Devil May Cry games and Hollow Knight) so take some of what I say with a pinch of salt

Magenta Horizon is like if banging your head against a wall repeatedly was somehow made satisfying, it's a tough game even on its standard difficulty which becomes apparent pretty quickly but I like that the game sets those expectations right off the bat, instead of having crazy difficulty spikes show up out of nowhere (which may be the experience for some but in my opinion it mostly wasn't)

the actual combat system offers a good amount of freedom, with flexible combos, many approaches to different enemy types that each offer unique challenges of their own, for example even the first enemy type you meet can prove to be disruptive in the later stages

MH is confident in its enemy design not only gameplay-wise but visually too, with every little creature looking weirder and more hellish than the last, which surely serves to create a memorable experience when coupled with the general aesthetic of the game (which I believe was inspired by the works of Tim Burton) that succeeds in creating a somewhat bleak, purgatory-like place filled with character, and if the later levels are anything to come by it looks like the atmosphere of the game will only get more interesting from here

the soundtrack to this afterlife is quite good with many solid tracks to its name, and all in all the sound design of it does its job pretty well I'd say

I haven't found a good way to mention the story and the world building but it is definitely intriguing in places, and even though there aren't many answers given to us just yet the main characters are charming enough for the time being and I'm interested to learn more about them

Magenta Horizon is a passion project made by one person and it shows that in the best possible ways, it's frankly impressive how good this game is already all things considered, I can't think of any major issues I have with it at the moment, pretty much all I have is praise so I apologise if this review is a bit boring to read because of that, but I do legitimately really like this game and want to see more of it, and I hope it becomes successful cause it damn sure deserves it

definitely keeping my eye on this

like uhhh 9/10 or something if you want a score
(+4)

Probably the best action game I've played this year, there's a wondeful chaos to Magenta Horizon's combat. It's remarkable how dense with enemies the screen can get, but fights remain coherent and manageable thanks to the extensive aerial mobility. This isn't a game where you’ll be thoughtlessly mashing out a bunch of interchangeable attack strings, instead careful positioning and enemy prioritization are the keys to success. I'm particularly fond of the encounters that feature a ton of projectiles, as they emphasize the fluid and twitchy movement mechanics that make this combat really shine. A deeply impressive piece of work, I'm excited to see where the project goes next. Also, Blücher is very cute :^)

(+3)

10/10 game. I've been following this since early alpha and it's really shaping up! Everything is so friendly including the train wow what a friendly demon train.

10/10 huh, so are you gonna stream it or what :arkknoCackle:

(1 edit)

Don't bully her. She said she was planning to do that. :pensive:

(+1)

this should not be free for the Fun i am recieving!!!!!

(+1)

Amazing game the combat style and soundtrack are great and so much fun 

(+1)

10/10 

There is a demon train, what more could you ask for?

(1 edit) (+1)

Anyway review time, cuz itch review system is broken. I might be a bit biased, but this is genuinely one of the most fun games I've played in a while. 

The gameplay is similar to games like Hollow Knight or Dust an Elysian Tail (don't tell Maddi I mentioned Dust), featuring DMC-like style mechanics. Even though, truthfully, some edges of it are still rough, it's still a great experience. Controls are well put together, enemies are responsive and challenging (doubly so for the bosses), the skills and combos add a lot of depth to the learning curve. My only complaint would be the blocky level design, but that's whatever.

Act 1 is not super long. It will probably take about 4-6 hours on your first playthrough, depending on how bad you are how quickly you can learn the mechanics. Current speedrun time is about 40 minutes, if that helps. Then there's also the Reaper difficulty, but we don't talk about that.

Story and worldbuilding so far are very intriguing, and I adore the main cast and their banter. Following acts promise more insight into the Nest and other reapers so that's something I'm hyped for. Too bad they'll probably release about the same time as Silksong or JA's Witcher 3 video.

The music and art are probably the strongest parts of the game, honestly. Each stage has its own soundtrack in two variants, for exploration and for combat, and each one rocks. Same goes for the art. The game exudes its own unique style, especially so in enemy and character design. Just look at Blucher's portraits.

And do keep in mind, all of the above was made by just one person (sans for the cutscene art).

Blucher plushie when :jphPout:

Probably never.

(1 edit)

Not if I can help it