AKUJI THE DEMON

Akuji the Demon is an excellent freeware platformer from Japan that puts many commercial titles to shame. The storyline alone is already a twist on the familiar hero kills foozle plot: you play a human who is turned into a demon by Akuji, who is himself an evil demon! Some of the bosses are awesomely original too, like the flying squid head with tentacles and eyes as weak points (the second boss) and a weird electric UFO thing which you must lure into destroying itself by getting it to shoot at you while standing in front of a mirror (the third boss).

The controls are very responsive and intuitive, though for some reason the jump button is mapped to the same key as “shoot.” However, in practice this isn’t actually a problem because you can shoot in any direction by moving left or right while holding down the fire button. As for items, aside from Akuji’s default attack there’s also a projectile orb which homes in on enemies once shot, bombs that destroy nearby enemies

Akuji the Demon is an excellent freeware platformer from Japan that puts many commercial titles to shame. The storyline alone is already a twist on the familiar hero kills foozle plot: you play a young demon who’s been summoned by the village priest to stop his evil brother, who happens to be the one who killed everyone in your village. I can’t really explain more without giving away spoilers, but trust me when I say that it’s worth playing just to find out what happens!