Darkrise

If Diablo were smuggled into a 16-bit arcade cabinet and left to ferment for a decade, it might look a lot like Darkrise. Built by just two indie developers, this side-scrolling, hack-and-slash RPG drips with pixel nostalgia and punishes with modern bite.

You’ll start by picking one of four classes, the spell-slinging Mage, blade-swinging Warrior, arrow-raining Archer, or knife-flashing Rogue, each with their own skillsets, quirks, and tragic limitations. From there, it’s straight into the meat grinder: 100 hostile locations crawling with goblins, skeletons, and demons, all eager to spill your pixel blood. Enemies pour in from both sides or crackle into existence from random portals, and if you’re unlucky, you might run into a “defective” foe with unpredictable, overclocked stats.

The combat is pure sugar rush: screens shake, strikes flash, loot pops like confetti, and the pace leaves no time for sightseeing. You’ll dance between attacks, hoover up gold and gear, and pray your tiny inventory has room for that rare gem you just pried from a demon’s cold, dead hands.

Darkrise feeds the loot-gremlin in your brain with eight gear types in six rarities, socketable gems, and a smithy willing to reforge your kit until it sings. A sprawling talent tree lets you min-max to your heart’s content, while shared gold and gems between characters make experimenting with new builds painless.

Sure, the skill variety could be broader, and the gear treadmill occasionally clogs with junk, but the satisfying feedback loop and sheer volume of content make Darkrise a pixelated playground for hack-and-slash diehards. Ads can be exiled with cheap IAPs, leaving nothing between you and hours of goblin-slaying glory.

Pick your class. Sharpen your blade. The realm isn’t going to save itself.