Flora & Fang: Guardians of the Vampire Garden

While everybody loves and remembers Donkey Kong and its equally great sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., the same cannot be said about the divisive third installment. By swapping in a forgettable new hero and turning the platformer into more of a shoot ‘em up, Donkey Kong 3 wasn’t nearly as popular as its predecessors. If you’re one of those gamers who feels that Stanley got a raw deal, then you need to play Flora & Fang, the new game from Magnus Fredriksson. Inspired by Nintendo’s 1983 arcade game, this is a horror-themed platform/shooter where a pair of vampires use bug spray to protect their sacred garden from all kinds of pests. Is this justice for Stanley? Find out now when I review Flora & Fang: Guardians of the Vampire Garden.

Flora & Fang is the kind of action game that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. And I don’t just mean the obvious nods to Donkey Kong 3, but also a lot of other arcade games from the 1980s, like Bubble Bobble and Ghosts ‘N Goblins. It stars a pair of young sibling vampires with a real taste for gardening. With their father going away on business, Flora and Fang are left in charge, which means fending off the family’s prized pumpkins from a night filled with creepy, crawly insects.

The goal in each stage is simple enough – kill the insects before they grab or destroy the pumpkins. You do this by shooting bug spray straight up, just like Stanley in Donkey Kong 3. It will take a few hits to daze the pests, but when they are completely covered in bug spray, you’ll jump into them, pop the bubble and get rid of the menace once and for all. Of course, what makes this challenging is that there are all kinds of insect foes coming from all sides, so you can’t just watch the sky waiting for a spider to descend.

And that’s just the start of Flora and Fang’s troubles, because they’ll quickly discover that some insects are there to light the pumpkins on fire or attempt to eat them when they’re still on the ground. Sometimes there will be a bottomless pit or fire that the pumpkins can fall into, as well as conveyer belts and fans that can push things around in a lot of inconvenient ways. Sometimes there will be objects you can interact with, such as bubbles that not only contain coins when they are popped, but act as a way to bounce from one platform to another. The game does a good job combining all of these obstacles and hinderances, creating some devilishly difficult stages towards the end.

The wildly different level designs will also keep you on your toes. There are many that are more vertical, creating a tight, claustrophobic stage where you’ll need to climb a staircase or tree. At the same time, there are just as many stages that are flat and horizontal, offering a more traditional level where you mostly run from left to right. What’s fun about these stages is how each one takes you to a new location. Even when you’re stuck in a single castle or forest, there’s a nice variety of stage designs. You’ll also find that there are some fun nods to other classic games in the locations, such as stages that resemble Castlevania.

While the gameplay is extremely simple, the game does a good job of adding a little depth as you go along. This comes in the form of an upgrade shop that will let you buy a more effective spray gun, change out your running shoes, add a coin magnet and add more hearts to the life bar. There are also special items you can use mid-level, such as the green frog, bugs bane and snowman. These will help attract and kill the pests, and best of all, they can be upgraded over the course of the game. There are also power-ups and temporary weapons you’ll run into out in the garden, such as a laser gun, flame thrower and watch that stops the enemies dead in their tracks.

As a throwback arcade-style action game, Flora and Fang delivers where it counts. It looks great, has simple gameplay and the short cinemas between worlds help to tie everything together. It’s also surprisingly long, with six different worlds to complete, each with eleven stages and a boss fight. It’s worth mentioning that one of the worlds is nothing more than a bunch of levels parodying famous arcade games, like *QBert, Space Invaders and the original Mario Bros. These stages are a lot of fun, but feel kind of strange being dropped in the middle of the game. It’s almost as if the game gives you an arcade-themed intermission.

While I certainly love how much mileage the developer was able to get out of the bug spray conceit, I found that it ran out of steam towards the end. Sure, it kept adding new obstacles and making things more challenge, but the action starts to feel a bit repetitive after a while. It made me yearn for more power-ups to buy or helpers to upgrade. It could also be that you won’t feel the repetition as much if you play it in shorter doses. I played through the game in several longer chunks, which may not be the optimal way to experience Flora and Fang.

One thing that I really liked about the storytelling is how much it resembled a children’s book, right down to the silly rhymes. This is something I wanted to see more of. We occasionally get cinemas that explain where we’re headed next, but it’s missing the fun rhyme-time story structure. That’s not so much a complaint, but rather it’s me yearning for more of the qualities I liked about the game. Same goes for the levels based on old arcade games. It’s cool that they are there, but I would have liked a few more. Perhaps I’m just being greedy.

The truth is, there isn’t a whole lot to complain about, because Flora & Fang checks off all of the boxes. It’s a throwback action game that looks and plays the part, all while offering a lot of content, some cool upgrades, fun bosses and even stages based on old school arcade games. Best of all, it’s only nine dollars. That’s only 36 quarters. I definitely would have spent that playing through this game in the arcade. Who knew protecting pumpkins could be this much fun?