A festival of pixel art and metal, brutal and generous, cut out for challenge lovers. The resource system tying healing, ammo and checkpoints creates genuine tactical tension, at the cost of sometimes punishing difficulty.
Your verdict
Category
Action1 player16+
Description
A metal run-and-gun by Steel Mantis, publisher Big Sugar, out on Switch in 2019. In an over-the-top heavy-metal space opera, you blast hordes of enemies with overpowered weapons and bloody melee. Sumptuous pixel art and a soundtrack by the guitarist of Celtic Frost forge a deluge of action as demanding as it is gleeful.
Valfaris review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
2/5
Story
★★★★★
"Classic"
The world pushes heavy-metal imagery to its extreme: flesh monsters, nightmarish architecture, saturated colors. Every screen looks like the cover of an extreme metal album, and this owned visual identity is the whole singularity of the game.
The heavy-metal soundtrack, written by a member of Celtic Frost, is inseparable from the experience. Every riff underscores the brutality of the action and the excess of the settings, and the music becomes a full-fledged component of the gameplay, galvanizing every fight.
The bosses are monsters of flesh and metal worthy of the wildest metal album covers. Their visual excess comes with demanding but always fair patterns, and felling them delivers a surge of power to match the spectacle.
An underrated gem
A run-and-gun of insane class, where metal becomes both aesthetic and gameplay. For the power of its heavy-metal art direction, the precision of its combat and its gleeful arsenal, it's a gem that pushes the genre to a peak of style and controlled violence.
Is Valfaris still worth playing in 2026?
Seven years after release, Valfaris remains one of the most stylish and demanding run-and-guns in the catalog, a secret still too well kept. Its heavy-metal aesthetic and soundtrack by a member of Celtic Frost haven't aged an inch, and its action stays as precise as it is brutal. As the genre surges back, it's the ideal moment to catch up with this gem. On Switch, its levels split into snappy segments lend themselves perfectly to gaming on the go.
