Lovish: Retro adventure, chaotic charm, and the quest for love.
It’s been a while since we last saw LABS Works’ work. Astalon: Tears of the Earth, which came out in 2021, let players choose from three different heroes and fight their way through a twisted tower. It was a mix of Metroidvania exploration and a light touch that reminded me of Blizzard’s The Lost Vikings. It took a while to figure out Astalon’s secrets, but once they were revealed, it was a good entertainment for action-platforming fans.
In 2026, LABS Works and DANGEN Entertainment work together to make Lovish, a shorter, faster-paced game that looks and feels like it came from the NES era and has a fun, crazy tone. Astalon needed careful exploration and character control. Lovish, on the other hand, is all about quick, manageable challenges.
Platforming, fighting, and puzzles are all boiled down into single-screen battles that take precision, patience, and imagination. The game has seven worlds and more than 50 rooms. Some players might go into Lovish expecting a long Metroidvania, but it’s more about the fun (and pain) of tight, punishing action wrapped in humor and charm than about huge worlds to explore.
The story of Lovish is meant to be silly, using tropes while making fun of them.
Players take control of Sir Solomon, a knight who is crazy about Princess Tsuna. At the beginning of the adventure, the Devil Lord takes her hostage, setting off the standard “rescue the princess” plot.
Solomon isn’t really a hero, though. He’s more of a nervous romantic. He is afraid that Princess Tsuna might choose one of his friends over him if he finishes the quest with his other Saviors of Light. Because he is scared, he leaves the team to go after her by himself, which starts a crazy solo journey.
At every turn, Lovish makes fun of things. Solomon’s helmet sends out a love beam that sometimes makes bosses fall in love with him. Random events happen after each level, and they can be anything from turn-based battles with AI-generated characters to strange minigames that remind you of WarioWare or Retro Game Challenge.
In one event, a dragon girl cooks an enemy for Solomon to eat, and in another, you’re thrown into a zombie horde that looks like it came straight out of a mini-Vampire Survivors spoof. These parts are random, sometimes painful, and always funny. They give the game a story personality that stands out even though it looks old.
At its core, Lovish is surprisingly easy to play.
The goal of each level is to get to the exit door, which is shown on a single screen. In order to do this, players may have to turn on switches, find keys, beat enemies, or change the way environmental hazards work. The idea behind the game is simple, but it has to be executed very carefully. Sir Solomon starts with only one hit point, so any spike, enemy, or weapon will kill him right away.
Players start with about 200 hearts, which are like lives. To keep them from running out, they need to plan carefully. There are extra challenges because there are secrets in every room. Crowns, which are collectible MacGuffins, can be found behind blocks, earned by quickly finishing a room, or gained by not killing any enemies at all.
These crowns give you access to new skills and secret passageways, making the game more fun to play again and again and pushing you to look around carefully. The way the game is designed will be especially fun for people who like to perfect runs or speedruns. On the other hand, casual explorers can still enjoy the core platforming experience without worrying too much about crowns.
The game also has two shops in the world, which are run by Purin and her sad sister Sara.
Power-ups like upward sword attacks, dash skills, and even a lightning bolt attack that hits from far away can be bought in these shops. Some items have effects that are less clear, which adds to the sense of discovery. To unlock these improvements, you need to collect coins throughout the levels. This gives growth a real payoff beyond just surviving rooms.
Lovish‘s puzzles and fights are very closely connected. Most of the rooms are set up like small puzzle boxes, so you have to be careful about how you move and when you do things to avoid getting hit by enemies. On some levels, spikes disappear and reappear, platforms move, and there are environmental dangers that make players think ahead.
In a common situation, Solomon needs to step off a flying block in order to make a jump. If he fails, the block disappears, leaving him stuck and forcing him to die and try again. Combat is easy and works well. The enemies don’t usually have complex AI; they just walk or shoot projectiles, but the fact that they are there and the one-hit-point system make things tense.
Every ten rooms, there is a boss fight, and each one requires more planning because it takes more than one hit to beat. The bosses are all different, from big mushrooms and wild mice to tributes to old games like Castlevania and Bubble Bobble. The main battle never changes a lot, but adding things like upward sword attacks, dash moves, or the lightning bolt makes it more flexible and gives skilled players more ways to beat challenges.
Chance is what makes the game really great. Events and minigames that happen after a level make both puzzles and fighting less predictable. Some events give you hearts or things as a reward, while others punish you for making mistakes. This keeps the tension high and keeps the game from getting boring. This mix of precise platforming, strategy battles, and random mini-events is what makes Lovish feel both old and new.
The balance of Lovish’s style is what makes it so good.
Each room is short and easy to get through, but you need to pay close attention and be skilled to learn enemy patterns, environmental quirks, and secret crown places. The one-hit-point method is fair and punishing at the same time.
It forces players to learn how the game works instead of just using brute force. Even though boss fights are easy, they can be very challenging, especially if you use power-ups in the right way. The bad things are mostly small. Combat stays simple even after a few powers are added, so once a player gets good at basic attacks, there isn’t much room for change in how they play.
At first, some rooms can feel unfair, especially when environmental dangers are combined with enemy placement, and it may take more than one try to figure out the right way to do things. Also, chance events that happen after a level can sometimes punish players unfairly, like losing hearts for no reason. However, the humor and unpredictability of the game usually make up for these times.
Lovish doesn’t use traditional XP or leveling systems like Astalon or many other Metroidvania games do.
Experience points may show up as awards sometimes, but they don’t do anything useful—they’re just there to look nice. Instead, you move forward by buying things in shops, earning coins, and unlocking crowns.
This design choice puts an emphasis on skill over grinding, which means that the game is available to players who want a short, hard experience without having to spend hours farming XP. The crowns are like meta-progression; they let you into hidden rooms, give you new skills, and even give you secret friends like Mort, a grim ghost who can fight for Solomon against bosses.
This makes players want to go through rooms more than once, checking out every corner and trying out different methods each time. The mix of collectible crowns, items that can be bought, and randomness after each level makes for a system where progress feels important without the need for traditional grinding.
Lovish looks like a love letter to the days of the NES. Crisp, colorful sprites are used to make characters, enemies, and elements of the world look cute. Each world has its own background, ranging from peaceful woods to dangerous castles filled with lava, but they all have the same 8-bit look. Illustrations and minigames for events that happen after a level have bright, often funny art that fits with the game’s sarcastic tone.
Ryusuke Mita’s character designs deserve extra praise because they add a fun, exaggerated style that works perfectly with Solomon’s crazy adventure. This constant and fun art style makes even small details, like Solomon’s love beam hitting a huge bird, feel natural. Fans of original NES games will love how much care was put into every detail and how beautifully the sprites move.
The music in Lovish is unquestionably the best part.
The catchy chiptune music in each level makes me think of old Final Fantasy games and other 8-bit favorites. The game’s crazy graphics and funny sound effects go well with the music’s catchy melodies, rising harmonies, and crunchy bleeps and bloops.
The sound effects are just as well done, giving satisfying feedback for attacks, jumps, and interacting with the world. The music and effects work together to make every level feel alive by adding to the drama and the humor.
With a spin, Lovish is a fun return to platform games from the past. The game made by LABS Works and DANGEN Entertainment feels both familiar and strangely new at the same time. The idea behind the story—saving Princess Tsuna while dealing with Sir Solomon’s crippling insecurities—is silly, funny, and utterly charming.
The controls are easy to learn but very exact, and the game has clever puzzles, memorable boss fights, and single-hit-point mechanics. Post-level events, rare crowns, and power-ups make the game playable again and again without having to grind XP.
The game looks and sounds like it was made in the NES era, but it has its own fun style, with bright sprites, event illustrations, and catchy chiptune music. There are a few small problems with the game, like random crashes on PC, slow progress in battle, and sometimes unfair events after levels, but they aren’t as big a deal as the game’s general polish and personality.
