Since the age of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, platformers have remained a staple of the gaming community, with the horror genre a popular setting. In Blood of the Werewolf you get to play Selena, a mother enraged with the loss of her child, stolen by other monsters. She sets out to find her child, Nicolai and revenge the death of her beloved husband.

It’s a simple premise to what turns out to be a simple, if challenging game. In the guise of Selena you are armed with a bow, useful for offing monsters at a distance, but when the moon shines on her, Selena turns into a werewolf, all claws and teeth. Each of your personas has its own particular merits and skill, Selena is the only one who can climb stairs, whereas the werewolf can create its own temporary platforms.

Along the way both can collect talismans which enhance their powers and in the case of Selena, improve her bow.

The actual story becomes pretty meaningless, just an idea to wrap the game around. The real object of the game is to test your skill on the platforms. You get to battle wave after wave of monsters which will come at you in patterns; the key to survival is the see and understand those patterns, especially in the boss fights. Travelling through the environments offers up not just monsters but also traps and some of these can be a problem.

The controls on the game are a bit of a nightmare, dodging the vats of life sucking goo is pretty easy, but climbing the ever present stairs will try your patience if you’re going to restrict yourself to the keyboard. The game support controllers and the game suggests you use one for very good reasons. Things do improve with a controller, but it can remain tricky at times to get the controller to reacted with the sensitivity required for the game.

Graphically the game looks quite old and it’s unknown whether this stylistic choice was meant to hark back to older games or just a matter of saving money on the programming. Oddly enough the retro vibe works in the game's favour.

The game's music is instantly forgettable and often drowned out by everything else. The continuous "Huh" that our heroine makes starts to grate after a short time, given that this is a platformer and she spends the greater part of her time jumping around you need to get used to this sound as it literally happens every few seconds.

I was really in two minds about the game, retro vibe is one thing, but the game really lacked anything original and there was little here that had not already been explored in other games. If you really like platformers then it’s probably worth a punt, it certainly will present a challenge.

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Charles Packer