Rating of
4/5
Where Indie and Fangame Collide
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 05/27/25
“Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons” (“P&S”) is an unofficial sequel to a game that already has an official sequel, created by a lone Indie developer. The original game that inspired “P&S” is “The Maze of Galious,” an ancient precursor of the Metroidvania sub-genre released in Japan and Europe by Konami in 1987, originally for the mysterious MSX computer system, but with a Famicom (NES) port later in the same year. “The Maze of Galious” was, itself, already a sequel, and, in fact, was the middle game in a trilogy that included a SHMUP called “Knightmare” (1986) and an Adventure game called “Shalom” (late 1987). Due to the limited releases of the first and third games in the ‘Knightmare’ Trilogy, only “The Maze of Galious” made much of a lasting impression, and only, it seems, in Europe.
It’s unsurprising, then, that the one-man team behind the labor of love and homage to “The Maze of Galious” that is “P&S” is from Spain. Yes, Francisco Téllez de Meneses, whose inaugural foray into Indie game development was 2014’s delightful “UnEpic,” is has continued releasing retro-styled Indie projects, and “P&S” is the latest of these endeavors. Not content simply to release a modern sequel on modern systems, ‘Fran’ (as he prefers to be called) developed “P&S” with the intention of being able to run it on legacy MSX hardware (and emulators), but with a full Windows port available on Steam. Even better, while the original ‘Knightmare’ Trilogy was a 100% solo experience, Fran’s fan-game/sequel is designed from the ground-up for split-screen cooperative play.
Presentation
“P&S” is built entirely from custom pixel art for the environments, characters, and enemies, done in a style that could have been displayed by the ancient MSX hardware of the mid-‘80s. As a result, the visuals have a delightful ‘chunky pixel’ look to them, but the resolution is a bit on the low side, making rooms feel somewhat smaller than they actually are. While most characters are fairly small and possess limited frames of animation, the game’s plethora of terrible boss monsters are the opposite, being screen-filling monstrosities with a lot of animation – which is integral to learning their attack patterns.
Audio in “P&S” is quite pleasant and lands somewhere between ‘chiptunes’ and ‘MIDI’ in audio quality. There are a handful of tracks that get recycled quite a bit, but, in general, the music is good, never annoying, and at least in the case of the ‘boss spawn’ theme, somewhat memorable.
Technically, “P&S” is a very solid experience. It supports Xinput controllers out of the box, and the only time Chris and I had trouble with the game assigning the wrong player to the wrong character was when Chris ‘forgot’ to plug in his controller and the game was assigning one character to my controller and the other to the typewriter. The game is overall a very polished experience, with seamless drop-in/drop-out coop and a plethora of QoL features, such as an on-screen map that always shows the locations of both characters in the event the player’s split-up. Unfortunately, the game’s major technical failing is also tied to multi-player: Playing in coop completely disables the game’s Steam Achievements. While Achievements are generally stupid, they can be nice for keeping track of how much you’ve done in any given game, so I used the third-party Steam Achievement Unlocker tool to gain access to the things that Chris and I did in-game after the fact (and Chris REALLY likes the Pavlovian Achievement sound Steam added… but not as much as the PlayStation Trophy sound).
Story
“P&S” is written as a direct sequel to “The Maze of Galious.” In that old Konami title, a Grecian Knight named Popolon and his lover Aphrodite (not the actual goddess, but a sorceress named after her) must navigate a magical castle in order to confront the titular evil wizard to lift a curse placed on their unborn son… Pampas.
In “P&S,” Pampas, now a grown man and a Knight himself, as well as his younger sister, Selene, a sorceress like her mother, must venture back into the magical castle to confront Galious once again, who has returned as an undead, undying, and unkillable lich. The brother and sister duo aren’t alone in their endeavors, but must enlist the aid of the Grecian pantheon of gods in order to slay Galious’ summoned demons and lift his veil of immortality.
While this story does have a beginning, middle, and end, it generally feels sloppily put-together. I don’t remember the script in “UnEpic” feeling like such an exercise in ESL and Engrish, but the script in “P&S” definitely does. It’s possible that this is part of the ‘homage’ to “The Maze of Galious,” which was developed, released, and translated during an era of absolutely egregious Engrish coming out of even the biggest Japanese development houses (which weren’t actually all that big yet). Sometimes the hints from the Grecian gods are less than helpful, simply because the wording is so unnatural.
Aside from criticizing the localization, as a Classicist, I have a problem with the game’s world and lore. It seems that the original “The Maze of Galious” was written the way it was due to the Japanese writer having a warped and distorted view of the Classical West. But Fran didn’t even try to correct this view, but just rolled with it, giving us a setting that feels like an uncomfortable blend of the Western middle ages with the Classical period, almost like an alternate world where Christianity never rose and displaced the Grecian pantheon. While I would love to live in such a world, none of this is actually covered by the game in any way, neither via lore dumps nor demonstrated via world-building.
“P&S” isn’t a super-long game by any stretch of the imagination. Playing in coop, we got about 12 hours out of it. We didn’t find ALL of the secrets, but the secrets themselves aren’t all that compelling.
Gameplay
“P&S” is a true spiritual successor to “The Maze of Galious” in that it is an exploration-based Metroidvania title where the player can swap between a Knight and a Sorceress to employ their unique skills at will. However, where “P&S” outshines its inspiration is in the ability to split the screen in half and have two players control each of the title characters.
Early on, Pampas and Selene have fairly similar movesets, in that they can waddle from side-to-side in the game’s sidescroller-presented castle, as well as climb ladders and perform basic attacks (a sword and a magical jolt, respectively). However, in true Metroidvania form, it isn’t long before the brother-sister duo start picking up unique, permanent power-ups that only one of them can use. By the end of the game, the two characters feel completely different from each other, and frequently run into situations that they must tackle in tandem. For a single player, this would mean performing an action (like Pampas’ double-jump) then switching to the other character to immediately perform another action (like Selene’s blink-teleport). In order to allow coop teams to get around some of this design, in a two-player game, Pampas and Selene can teleport to each other no matter where on the map they might be, and can furthermore, revive each other… but in the process cut the reviving player’s current health bar in half in order to share it with the downed player.
Either solo or as a duo, players will explore a large, interconnected castle filled with monsters, secrets, and shrines to the various gods. The castle also contains 10 sub-realms that are entirely controlled by a large demonic boss, with each realm requiring specific power-ups to successfully navigate and each boss requiring pattern memorization to defeat. While bosses can be considered ‘easier’ in coop, with two players dishing out twice as much damage in the same span of time, many of them are designed with attacks that can ONLY be evaded by one of the two main characters, meaning that one player WILL get biffed by certain attacks and may find themselves unable to contribute very much to the fight.
Exploring the castle is generally quite fun, as the on-screen map gives a good indication of where the player should go next at any given time. Players are, however, still free to wander at their leisure and figure out ways to do things out-of-order. The only real downside to the game’s exploration is tied directly to the visuals: While the chunky pixel art IS generally very nice, there has been no effort put into telegraphing where secrets might be. Far from the enticing cracked walls that made finding secrets in “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” so do-able, “P&S” follows the too-old-school paradigm of ‘hit every wall, then rub your face against it’ in order to find secrets. Even more aggravating are the secrets that involve NOT killing any monsters in a given room, standing still for an arbitrary amount of time, or jumping up and down 5 times. On occasion, an in-game hint will lampshade some of the necessary secrets, but that still leaves plenty of the game in a ‘Guide, Dang it!’ limbo.
Overall
“Pampas & Selene: The Maze of Demons” is yet another delightful retro-romp by the Indie developer behind “UnEpic.” As someone who never got the chance to play “The Maze of Galious” back in the day, “P&S” does a great job of giving us a modern-day ‘remake’ that captures the old game’s charm while ditching most of the old-school cruft that can make old games so frustrating and hard to stomach. As an all-too-rare cooperative Metroidvania title, “P&S” ranks near the top of the list, with its ability to force cooperation at times combined with giving players the freedom to wander the castle and demon realms in two different directions simultaneously. If you love Metroidvanias and have one friend who also loves Metroidvanias, you two owe it to each other to snag a copy of this game and tackle it together.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5
