Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness

Release date: April 14, 2022
Platforms: Switch
Version tested: Switch
Audio languages: English, Japanese
Demo available: No
Paid DLC: Yes

The Gotta Protectors franchise is older than a lot of people might assume, having been around for well over a decade, starting as an incredibly obscure Xbox 360 Live game known as Protect Me Knight, which garnered some infamy due to its localization, which included lines such as "Save me... my hero! Defeat f$%kin' goblins!" and was well-liked for its low entry price point and fun - if a bit repetitive - gameplay loop, essentially being a tower defense game where you have to protect a princess (who is the source of the above line, by the way) from a horde of monsters, with different characters available to play as.

Since then, the series has coasted along and sold okay, if not spectacularly, with a 3DS installment following in 2014, although Europe was sadly screwed out of that one, and this new Switch entry following suit in October 2019, taking two and a half years to get localized and released internationally, for whatever reason, but it's here and we're all the happier for it!

As far as any sort of plot goes, there isn't much to talk about. The princess's castle has gained the ability to move, and it becomes your job to destroy all of the enemy castles and bring peace back to the world - that's about it. This is, of course, a pointed parody of the "plots" many actual 8-bit games had back in the day, and Cart of Darkness lovingly describes, analyzes, subverts and parodies these elements to the best of its ability. There are short intermissions between missions, and they always contain some hilarious interactions between the various characters, which serves to break up things and make the world feel more alive - it's interesting how the heroes are portrayed as normal people rather than, well, genuine heroes who got nothing but heroic deeds on their minds. Instead, they're average Janes and Joes who have private lives of their own, and I find it especially surprising that a small project like this bothered to go into that direction - but it works. Just to name one example, the game's warrior-type character is also a model and appears on magazine covers to pay the bills, among many other things.

The writing is alright for the most part. 8-4, while normally a competent translation studio, did go a bit overboard sometimes, and perhaps not for the best - in many ways, the game's localization is very reminiscent of the works of Working Designs, insofar that at many points during the game, the dialogue is freely exaggerated, trimmed or completely made up altogether. The princess saying "Ok, Jose!" after picking upgrades between rounds is one such example, and comparing the Japanese and English version side-by-side shows that there's plenty more that was arbitrarily changed, for no good reason other than to inject some unnecessary humor into an already parodic game - not the best move, but at the very least it remains comprehensible.

Much like its plot, the core gameplay loop is a fairly straightforward one: you pick a mission, choose three out of all the available heroes and then head out. In order for the castle to move, the princess has to be pushed on top of it, and she will keep heading for the enemy fort until an obstacle gets in the way, most commonly barriers that either need to be eliminated by defeating all nearby monster or finding a key. Once the castle is reached, she will continue to bash into until it's destroyed - stage won. Naturally, monsters will continuously spawn and try to stop the princess, and should she run out of health, the mission ends in failure. As such, it is your job to keep the nasties away from her - easier said than done, because they will literally home in on her from all sides of the map, and destroying their nests, which otherwise will spawn more, is top priority. Thankfully, the princess will automatically recover her health when she's not currently under attack, and all stages come with various barriers that will momentarily keep the monsters at bay, with one character also having the ability to fortify these, such as building giant robots that shoot lasers at passing monsters, which is useful.

As you might expected, each of the playable characters has their own strengths and weaknesses. The warrior is very strong, but also slow. The ninja is lightning-fast, but has low defense and health, meaning he'll go down in a few hits. The magician has great ranged abilities, but is useless in close combat - you get the idea. It's worth it to experiment, as different party arrangements can spell victory or doom for certain maps, especially the ones from the DLC pack.

In addition to your regular attack, each character also has an assortment of skills, such as ranged attacks, healing, picking up and throwing, or the aforementioned fortification of barriers - all of these are useful in their own way, and you will be able to customize characters' movesets later on by unlocking various cartridges, which bestow said skills. There's a surprisingly large amount of these, also doubling as the game's achievement system of sorts, since many of these cartridges are only unlocked under very specific circumstances. Either way, once you're on the field, you can also switch characters on the fly by holding the shoulder buttons. This is especially useful, because the game will save the character's position, allowing you to very quickly switch around the battlefield when you're surrounded and need to be quick about saving the princess.

One mission will always consist of four rounds, basically self-contained battle maps with a castle to destroy. In-between, you'll get a chance to upgrade various things, such as the strength of your barriers, your character's stats, the princess's strength, etc., and this always resets between missions. Money is obtained by defeating monsters or finding it in chests, thus defeating as many enemies as possible is quite necessary. However, you can also choose not to upgrade anything in-between battles and rely solely on your skill, which leaves more money for permanent upgrades. Once a mission is completed, you will receive additional coins depending on how many lives you lost, how quick you were and how much damage the princess took in total - all of this moolah can then be used to upgrade your castle, which allows it to tank more damage and finish battles faster, which is useful. You can also purchase more skillsets (different from the ones cartridges bestow) and, once you've run out of other stuff to purchase, give alms to the local village, which has a few perks of its own.

Missions also come in four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard, the chosen level determines the resilience of the monsters and enemy castle. Naturally, 100% completion requires beating all missions on the highest difficulty setting, but the rewards also scale with difficulty.

There are a few light puzzle elements on occasion, such as having to hit the right levers to make the train tracks switch to the correct position, finding a key for corresponding color locks, or even the dreaded teleport puzzles á la Pokémon. Due to the frantic nature of the game, larger-scale puzzles wouldn't have fit, but they do break up the monotony every now and then - some of the more elaborate stages even have multiple castles on different tracks which you need to alternate between - not bad.

And gameplay-wise, that's about it. At its core, Cart of Darkness is inherently a multiplayer arcade experience, to the point that the single player mode feels... overwhelmingly pointless and difficult. This is not something you wanna play on your own, but rather an excellent experience with friends, especially since the simple nature means the game is easy to pick up and play, and the short length of each mission (usually about 20 minutes total) makes it a breeze. Thankfully it also supports online play, although you'd likely have to set this up in advance, as finding random people online to play with is, due to the game's obscure nature, rather difficult. Either way, it's oodles of fun with friends, and rather disappointing when alone - plus I couldn't quite figure out whether the game actually scaled depending on the amount of players present, but it appears the amount of monsters spawning was (seemingly?) the same.

What cannot be denied about the game is how beautiful it is! It's not uncommon for indie games to embrace the 8 and 16-bit style graphics of yesteryear to keep production costs low, but Cart of Darkness does not feel cheap in the slightest. The character sprites are large, detailed and well-animated, and even come in two flavors: smaller top-down models for the battlefields and large ones for the cutscenes, and they both look great, plus there's so many different poses and little animations for even the most inconsequential things that border on unnecessary, but it's a true testament to the developer's dedication. The character designs may be a point of contention, though, as almost all of them are highly sexualized, both male and female, with the valkyrie wearing nothing but a really skimpy bikini and the ninja only wearing a fundoshi. At the very least, the game does it to all sexes represented, but it may be distracting to some. Either way, the graphics are well done and do adhere to the color limitations of the NES, which is a double bonus for nerds like me.

The music, much like the graphics themselves, is also a love letter to the good ol' NES days, using the exact same instrumentation and feel, which once again works in the game's favor and heavily invokes the right type of nostalgia in those familiar. One drawback would be that the soundtrack isn't exceptionally huge, and you will hear many of the tunes very frequently over the course of your playthrough, but they do sound nice individually. The sound effects are exactly what you'd expect, and are in fact mostly reused from the previous games, and get the job done just fine. Princess Lola also has a voice, done in both Japanese and English, that can be set to either scratchy or clear, depending on how authentic you want your experience to be - despite my love for the old days, I still set it to clear.

While the main campaign is meaty enough, there is also extra content available in the form of paid DLC. While I don't usually condone this practice, I've also rarely seen it done so substantially. Several additional, lengthy (and quite challenging) campaigns, new assorted cartridges and - perhaps most delightfully - different arrangements of the various music tracks, all corresponding to a system of the past, such as the SNES, Mega Drive, Wonderswan, and so on, all cleverly described by copyright-friendly abbreviations, such as MD, WS and so on. Thankfully, the game is available in a deluxe edition that already includes the DLC, and I would definitely recommend to purchase that, as not only is the game already fairly inexpensive on its own, but the DLC is cheaper this way as well and, as mentioned, rather substantial.

And to this day, I'm glad that developers still make and release games on the simpler side such as this one, because its pick up and play nature made the game a favorite among visitors - especially during longer nights where brain function slowly diminishes. My only wish would be for the game to provide some sort of single player experience, as right now, it's rather stale.

In the end, my final verdict is

70% - perfect party experience!

Pros:

• Gorgeous pixel art...
• ...and brilliant soundtrack
• Addictive arcade co-op gameplay...

Cons:

• ...which gets lonely in single player
• Barely anyone online to play with

All screenshots were taken in undocked (portable) mode, but it doesn't make much of a difference for this game.