Vohenn review - "Well-made for mobile, with a lot of content"

• Lots of quests and items to collect
• Beautiful pixel art graphics
• Challenging gameplay

I have played a large number of Metroidvanias in the past, and with the rise of entries like Hollow Knight: Silksong, there is a high standard that indied need to meet to stand out. 

From the creator of Sword of Xolan, Vohenn is a 2D action platformer with Metroidvania-style exploration throughout its vast world. 

Vohenn is stunning, starting from the little introduction that contains beautiful pixel art and fantastic voice acting. This gives you context for why you are on this strange island after your ship has been wrecked. This island has elemental forces protecting it, but it has been consumed by darkness and monsters. 

As you move through the levels, you will find various monsters, along with loot, charms, plants, treasure, and so much more. It's one of those adventures that have secret areas, which can be subtly shown to you through monsters that you might choose to find. It's well-made in a lot of ways!

The optional lore through items you might find, like plants and alters, is interesting, and the amount of stuff to find keeps you looking through areas without it feeling boring to backtrack.

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With that in mind, I do dislike that enemies respawn in rooms if you exit and come back, with limited health to find around the various levels. There are rest stops, which allow you to replenish your health; however, these aren't marked on the map and are far and few between, making the levels very challenging. It's almost like you need to remember or mark down where things are. 

These elements of Vohenn made it feel like an extremely difficult adventure. There were times when I was defeated by bosses, but there wasn't a safe point nearby, and I had to rage quit. When you die, you restart at a save point with some shards you have collected left where you died.

It does have an upgrade system through Stats that can be changed during rest. These offer upgrades on health, strength and magic. Upgrading these different stats makes your character stronger, and you can select which one you want to upgrade when you rest and save.

Your magic can be changed if you unlock other spells to use. There are also different abilities to unlock (like double jump) along with charms that can boost different things - like making sure that a smaller amount of XP is dropped when you die. 

There is a lot of depth and complexity, with optional quests that you can take on as well. I do find the travelling from place to place to be quite cumbersome when I die, but I feel that if I were better and died less, maybe it would be less of an issue. The fact that you cannot save whenever - though I understand the decision for that - doesn't feel extremely mobile-friendly. The rest of the controls do feel smooth, though, like they were built for mobile.

Still, fans of the genre will probably find it worth its price tag, with plenty of things to do. It's a challenge, but a fun one, and the graphics are fantastic too.