Astalon: Tears of the Earth

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted April 10, 2026 on Steam This game is the epitome of how an indie metroidvania should be made. I can’t fathom how much I enjoyed this hidden gem, i loved how megaman-ish it is, though it has its flaws as the level design is quite erratic and sometimes makes no sense. I wish they had added more dialogue between the characters—their relationship was so charming and had great chemistry that deserved to be explored more. Definitely worth it!
• Recommended Posted January 11, 2026 on Steam Astalon is a fantastic metroidvania with a bunch of unique, well-executed ideas about progression. Healing is sparse with one huge exception: dying. The main gameplay loop is explore, do some bite-sized puzzles, kill some enemies, die, and do that again but better until you've found everything and/or beaten the game. I've seen reviews calling this tedious or a waste of time, but I don't remember feeling that at any point in my initial ~17 hour playthrough; you're not really repeating the same rooms/sequences as much as you're iteratively developing routes to new places and strategies to deal with troublesome encounters. I think the main flaw of the game is the alternate game modes, since those largely strip away this iterative experience and add some time sinks to regenerate health; I've beaten everything just to 100% the game, but the only modes I'd consider replaying are the base game and new game+. If you're interested in randomizers, Astalon has pretty solid Archipelago support in active development. This game is very well-suited to randomization, and the team developing this have added a bunch of options for that as well as some excellent quality of life features to deal with the extensive backtracking that comes whenever you randomize a metroidvania.
• Recommended Posted October 22, 2025 on Steam One of the best modern metroidvanias in this retro style! Is it very well-made, has an interesting story that isn't immediately obvious, original character-switching mechanic, well-thought puzzles, and overall balanced gameplay. Highly recommended!
• Not recommended Posted June 2, 2025 on Steam There are three points that ruined this game for me: [list] [*][b]You access the "shop" by dying[/b]: I guess the game is balanced around that mechanic, making it necessary to die in order to not turn the game into an unreasonably difficult hell - i don't know how viable it is to try and beat it without any of these upgrades. But personally, I wasn't comfortable with the idea of a metroidvania? periodically telling me "here, since the game's too difficult for you, buy some items" in a rogue-like manner instead of just locating shops on the map. [*][b]Too much unwanted backtracking[/b]: there are three playable characters that are switchable in-game, each with their own abilities that make overcoming certain obstacles possible, i.e. higher jumps, activating orbs that open doors, and temporarily destroying weeds that block the way - all of them needed to advance every few rooms. But you cannot switch between characters anytime you like - you need to find a campfire in order to do so, so you're forced to backtrack and deal with the same monsters constantly, over and over again. [*][b]More backtracking[/b]: when you die, you always respawn at the very start. [/list] There are more QoL lacks that are mentioned in other reviews. I didn't mind them too much... Other than that: the pixel art is beautiful, I like the retro look (the retro obtuseness not so much) and the soundtrack. So I tried to enjoy it and get hit as little as possible, even I was about to try and experiment firsthand what would the game be like without making use of the shop, but I just couldn't focus after the tedium of that much backtracking and I kept getting hit by the most stupid monsters. Keeping in mind the current flood of metroidvanias, this one doesn't stand out - the map designs are always interesting to me, but in this particular case, everything else was pretty average, plus the mentioned annoyances. There are many other astonishing titles out there offering almost the same features, if not more, without the excessive backtracking... so no, I don't recommend it.
• Recommended Posted September 22, 2025 on Steam Just play it. Seriously.. it's one of the best Steam games I've ran into. Just Fantastic gameplay and puzzle solving.
• Recommended Posted October 6, 2025 on Steam One of the very few actually competent indie metroidvanias available, the long and the short of it is if you like the genre and, like me, are sick of the endless Game Maker asset flip metroidvanias with block walls that only mete out one or two hours of gameplay, get this game. It does everything right and everything well. My feelings about it however are a bit more nuanced and mostly just amount to issues with the aesthetic and OST, which you spend a lot of time with in a game like this. The game is really going for an authentic NES vibe, but in a full length metroidvania it's a little too cute with not much of a purpose (thanks Shovel Knight). The OST often becomes shrill and grating and many of the areas are visually "samey". Aside from different colored bricks, I never really felt like areas were distinct until the last couple of late game stages. The fact that this game may or may not play on a real NES or is marketed as a found footage NES game or whatever doesn't do much for me, when one could instead have a fully orchestrated soundtrack and more visual diversity. Not being much of a fan of the character switching mechanic from Castlevania 3, which I assume was the inspiration for a similar mechanic here, this feature was another gripe as in order to justify the mechanic there are several recurring arbitrary obstacles specific to various characters and this made getting around a real chore, with some areas requiring character switches midscreen and back just in the course of basic travel, even in areas you have long since cleared. You will never find a character you like and be able to generally stick with them if you want, because you are constantly switching in order to deal with character specific obstacles and enemy types. I'm sure for some people this might be enjoyable, but I found it made the game more of a slog than it needed to be. Anyway, those are quibbles. Overall the game is very well made and if more indie devs in the genre put half as much effort into their games as was put into Astalon, we would all be the better for it.