Retro Adventures: A Review of 7Days Heroes

*Xbox Series X Review Copy provided by Dolores Entertainment

Raised in a laboratory, three heroes and their pug face a zombie uprising after their AI “mother” goes rogue and starts turning humans into the undead using nanomachines. With a combination of special abilities and weapons, these young heroes must save the world and the AI MAI from this apocalypse.

7Days Heroes is a 2-D pixelated platformer with gun based combat that shows influence from retro titles. You start as the Hero lead character (the boy in the white shirt) and “Pug” the pug as they try to find their separated companions, Megane & Hime. The levels are linear and at first reminded me of Contra as I moved through a forest jumping on various raised areas and shooting a few zombies with my starter pistol. After a few screens, I would find a crate that unlocked the ability to double jump via an inventory item. As the levels progressed, new items would unlock additional controls for your party such as the ability to make your party wait for you, or the ability to switch the leader.

Managing the party is not difficult and each character has their own specialties. The Hero obtains multiple guns that have stronger damage and fire rates that can be upgraded using the Nanomachine collectables that you gather in each stage. Pug has the ability of jumping higher distances and using a dash ability to get past enemies and obstacles easier in tight spaces. Megane (the blonde boy) has explosives such as grenades and a flame thrower and Hime gains multiple necklaces that allow her to fire psychic blasts and teleport her friends to her which is great for traversal.

There are seven areas with three to five levels, each has a target amount of Nanomachines to collect (normally with extra to gather) and one new gear item to find. Somewhere in your progress you will find a red key that is used to unlock the exit of the level. If you are injured, there are medicine pills that drop from crates, barrels, and enemies that will heal a few health bars and a BBQ unlock later on that fully heals whomever is the lead character. The levels have various difficulties as new enemies are introduced with either more health, new movements such as dashing, or their own weapons. Larger tank enemies and even literal tanks from the opposing government will join as “mini-bosses” and each area ends with a boss battle that rewards you with a badge of that boss to show your success.

Yet as with most indie games, there are some bugs that I experienced while playing 7Days Heroes. The main one and most annoying was the menu bug that would not allow you to exit the menu when upgrading your character, or would force you to exit to the main menu outside of the game. At times I had to force stop my game on the Series X and return back to what I was attempting to do. Other issues would be the overlay of the HUD blocking visibility of my character or the AI of the characters being unable to perform jumps to reach my location on their own. This is a hindrance as you cannot complete a level unless all of the characters are present at the exit point after it is unlocked with the red key.

The achievements/trophies for the game are simple enough for those that like to collect them. Most are tied to finishing a level or defeating a boss, upgrading weapons, or collecting all of the Nanomachines in the game. I ended the game with 485/1000 Gamerscore on my first playthrough and left eight achievements for future play. I took just over 6 hours to finish the game and replayed a few levels in that time as I was trying to get collectables or died fighting helicopters or one of the extra bosses (the dragon above).

The game seems simple, but I had to think about my strategy as the levels raised in difficulty. Learning where to position myself to jump over attacks, when to leave my team behind and run a boss solo (even though the uncontrolled characters are invincible to damage), or that using weapons that are not the pistol can cost you Nanomachines when you reload. I found Pug’s platforming levels to be very difficult until I remembered his dash ability which was an “aha” moment for me.

Overall 7Days Heroes was an entertaining game with a story that made me laugh multiple times. Regardless of the issues I had fun and plan to go back in the future to get the rest of the collectables and achievements. The game releases on March 28, 2024 on Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 & 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.