Executioners

When you fall into a pit full of thorns and goblins, it's too late to cry uncle. Executioners is a straightforward action platformer from the early nineties where one rule applies: move forward or die. No plot twists, no civilization—just your hero and a wave of enemies pouring in from both sides of the screen.

The story flickers into oblivion and honestly, who cares. The key is simple: jump across platforms, hit everything in sight, and grab health or armor when you get the chance. The game spans multiple worlds, each with its own theme—caves, castles, tombs, or avalanches. A few levels in and you'll know exactly what's expected of you.

The controls are classic, responsive, and utterly functional for their time. Jumps and strikes land exactly as intended. The problem kicks in later when the game stops being merely hard and becomes systematically unfair. Enemies swarm by the dozen, their collision detection is wonky, and your health drains just because you're in the wrong spot when their AI glitches out. You're starved for maneuvering space—in this take, "action" really means chaotic and frustrating.

Executioners survives in memory mostly because it's completely unfiltered. No story to bore you stiff, no cutscenes. It's pure arcade from the days when games were made for people who'd stare at a monitor and weren't afraid of repetitive strain. The graphics are painfully average, the sounds are audible, and the music does its job—none of it can save the creeping design flab in the later stages.

Today it appeals mostly to those craving primitive raw action without taxing the brain much. It's not a masterpiece, just a four-hour marathon you run through an emulator one evening and can't remember why the next morning. But there's something pure in that core—a game that looks simple but doesn't play fair.