Many thanks to PR Hound for providing me with a code for Parasite Pack for review purposes. They’re inventive, charming and cleverly designed ‘new retro’ experiences – and I can’t recommend the Parasite Pack highly enough. The Parasite Pack is also priced so low that it feels like a steal – especially when you consider that both games offer such a huge amount of content and game mechanics, with each title feeling like it refuses to stop evolving until the end. Both games have lovely visuals and excellent retro soundtracks as they originated as games that would play on genuine old school hardware (on cartridges too!), they have a really authentic aesthetic that makes them feel like lost classics of the late 80s. At least when you make progress through some properly hardcore levels in the Parasite Pack, you know you can pick it back up again without having to struggle through those stages again. With save states and password systems, the difficulty level of each game is eased somewhat – and avoids the issues found in ‘real’ retro games, whereby you might lose all of your lives and be right back to the first level again. It’s just as addictive and crazily difficult at times too, with some boss stages that’ll have your palms getting increasingly sweaty as you struggle to progress. It’s a spin-off of Flea!, with lots of little references to the previous game – but plays incredibly differently. Your worm’s specific length is important sometimes, you’ll have to dive back in the tape and emerge from a different hole in order to reach certain objectives or save specific fleas from their doom. It’s a little bit like Snake – with your worm having a limited length (expandable if you collect new tapes) and needing to avoid obstacles and deadly enemies, or perhaps catching fleas before they fall into traps themselves. The lovely pun in the title refers to the worm DJ who lives in a tape, trying to keep the dancing fleas in his night club(s) safe from harm.

However, also included in the Parasite Pack is the joyous – and again, pretty challenging – puzzler Tapeworm Disco Puzzle.

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