Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds 1.0.3

Low-budget indie games tend to be some of the most creative around, assuming they aren't just flipping assets poorly in Unity. Without the budget to dazzle the audience with beautiful graphics, they instead need to focus on something else to stand out. These restrictions can lead to some very creative premises. Let's look at Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds.

To install Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds, simply unzip the files inside the archive into any folder you want.

The plot is extremely simple and frankly barely worth mentioning. Hordes of undead monstrosities have appeared because of a cult, and you need to somehow take everything down to save your town. The plot is pretty much just portrayed in a single intro in the very beginning.

The gameplay is where this game pops off, especially for a free game. This game plays very similarly to both Contra and Metroidvanias. The fact that all your characters have a ranged attack and aims in eight directions makes combat feel very similar to Contra, while the movement and general platforming feels similarly to Metroidvanias. 

There are four playable characters, each with their own abilities and attacks. Normal level traversal will throw tons of enemies at you that die in one or two hits, but boss fights will require you learn their attack pattern and learn how to deal with them, as the playable characters are all practically as fragile as a normal enemy.

All in all, Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds is an incredibly unique game that everybody should check out.