Holdover (<1Mb) (mild mature content)
Hearken back to the days when videogames were fun and a real challenge too. I have a
fascinating game for you today which has all the best elements of puzzle platformers. If you enjoy Cave Story, you’ll certainly enjoy Holdover. It’s absolutely brilliant, though not as long as Cave Story.
There’s some depiction of blood, and some very mild cartoon nudity, as the character Marie sheds a garment if she suffers damage. But it is entirely non-explicit, and should for most people not be in any way objectionable, nor cause any embarrassment especially these-days. Over-politically correct parents ‘possibly’ might just want to limit this to slightly older youngsters.
Though it’s Japanese made, the website has an English option. Some parts of the game are quite or very challenging, especially some underwater sections where the margin between getting through successfully and running out of oxygen (game over!) is very tight. It’s also game over when your Health Points hit zero.
You play as Marie, a girl who just woke up on some sort of cryogenic chamber in an abandoned complex and is trying to figure out what happened to her and the world.
She had an incurable disease and was cyrogenically frozen, making use of a new (but incredibly slow) treatment to restore her ‘bit by bit’. Disaster occurs and Marie awakens to find the lab lifeless. Your goal as Marie is of course to escape the complex - which is teeming with booby traps.
There’s a large map to traverse and you have to find various power-ups that will allow her to reach other and deeper parts of the map. With oxygen, this is strictly limited at first, but finding Heart power-ups adds to the time Marie can spend underwater. Some suit upgrades help you to survive laser beams and spikes, but avoid instant death traps. Some very precise jumping is needed later in the game. As is usual in these sorts of games, most of it is learning how your environment works and planning ahead, often through trial and error; and for sure getting killed from time to time, or . . . err often!
Head for the nearest computer first, then look for the medical treatment room. After that you’re on your own, or use walkthroughs for clues! There are maps and mini maps available to view on the game’s website - just click there on the ’Capture’ tab. If you click on the SDK download tab, there's an alternate English dialogue with extra hints. Unzip this and put the msglist_custom.txt file in the extracted game folder. You can modify this text file too if you wish.
There are many of the usual hazards for these sorts of platformers, such as spikes, lasers, narrow platforms, moving and dissolving stones, traps, monsters and the underwater mazes to name just a few.
Though at times very difficult, this is more rewarding than frustrating in that it has an ultra fast in-game menu and very fast save and load times, so it doesn’t take long at all to be back where you were and retrying that next difficult part! Hold the 'Shift' key while using the 'Up/Down' arrow keys to your selection and release. Use Q-Save and Q-Load in-game, or Save/Load to save fully.
Some of the dialogue is hilarious, though always understandable - if occasionally somewhat awkwardly expressed!
The graphics are excellent and there’s some fine midi music as well. Controls are standard, ‘Arrow’ keys to move, dash, squat and cling, ‘Z’ key to jump or advance dialogue (and select in menu), ‘X’ key for actions (eg search or go through doors with a ! symbol) or cancel in menu, ‘Shift’ key to open in-game menu, and ‘Esc’ key to quit. You can sometimes use combinations of two 'Arrow' keys though it might matter which you press first before holding both keys!
It plays windowed or full-screen in XP, Vista and Win 7.
It’s a thoroughly splendid platform game - anyone hoping for even the mildest bit of eroticism is going to be completely disappointed, but if you want a really excellent platform game with thrills and spills as you try to progress, this would be hard to beat. Very Most highly recommended!
Video HERE
YouTube has a large number of video walkthroughs for if you get stuck.
Home Page and Download HERE
Alternate Download from Caiman HERE
