Publisher Flynn’s Arcade are back again, with another charming throwback to a simpler and much more challenging time.

Flora &Fang sees the titular vampires trying to protect the crops in their garden from being eaten or stolen by beasties; spiders, flys and more besides.

This takes the form of a single screen platformer with an unlikely inspiration: the bug-killing, plant-protecting Donkey Kong 3 (a complete oddity in the Donkey Kong series).

Of course, this being a Flynn’s Arcade-published game, Flora and Fang has gorgeous pixel art visuals (though they can feel a bit dark) and incredibly challenging gameplay, which sees your vampire spraying bugs with insecticide multiple times before they can be removed, with them often leaving coins behind after their demise.

It’s pretty good fun, but (and this is especially true of the earliest levels) it can feel a bit like a slog, as you can be knocked out of a level pretty easily (though you have three hearts, they can be lost in a, well, heartbeat), and when you are, you have to start it all over again.

Clear the bugs on a stage and you can move onto the next; after each level you’re graded on your performance. Not only does this not matter at all, but it also feels entirely random; I was regularly getting B grades despite ridding a stage of 100% of its bugs, and collecting every single coin.

Shops allow you to buy equipment and upgrade your gear, but these trips to purchase stuff are too few and far between, leading to a significant difficulty curve at the beginning of the game.

In fact, those early stages are tough going, not just because of their frustrating difficulty, but also because they rapidly feel repetitive, and they feel very lengthy without any indication as to when the stage will end.

Flora and Fang does get better; impressive boss battles and mini-games that each pay tribute to a different classic arcade title do live things up tremendously, but it takes a little too long before the formula is shaken up and things get interesting.

It’s a fun game overall, but be prepared to work your way through some fairly uninteresting levels for a while before things start to click. Two player simultaneous gameplay does also help, but again it takes a little while to become more interesting and enjoyable.

Flora and Fang is out now on Nintendo Switch and Steam.

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