You'll be done in two hours (The Serpent Lord is the first episode in a series of four short instalments, all of which are covered by the price), and replay's only really an option if you're hunting for the hidden diamond collectables or aiming for a speed run - but what's here is enough, just about. Run, jump, smack a variety of snake things around and make your way through a handful of deadly levels landing on as few spikes as possible. It's unadorned, then, but the game's so wonderfully unselfconscious in its aims that it creates the perfect atmosphere in which to enjoy its simple charms. The clock's the king if you want to get the most out of Tiny Barbarian - each death pushes you back to the last checkpoint but leaves the timer running. Playing it takes me back to 1990 so forcefully that I need to keep reminding myself I don't have double maths and a long-distance run tomorrow morning. This is an old-school hack-and-slash platformer-brawler unburdened by tricks and gimmicks and RPG progression systems. Howard's fiction with surprising power - and it too is weirdly comforting. Tiny Barbarian DX channels the popular idea of Robert E. Heads will be knocked from shoulders and rib-cages will be crushed as the red mist descends, but you're travelling in the company of someone who can handle themselves pretty well, and the fantasy's warmly familiar in a pulpy sort of way, what with all its serpent worshippers and full moons and tumble-down temples. I've never read a Conan the Barbarian novel, but I suspect that they're weirdly comforting.
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