♦ Livestream of 2 MegaZeux worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:47) “Call of Caethrath” by Jauhis (2004) [https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=648]
• (1:30:11) “Stronghold (Demo)” by Jauhis (2010) [https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=1678]
I said I'd get through the end of Caethrath or die trying, and in this video one of those things does happen!
That whole sealed temple with the extremely difficult to hit enemies that are very spongey and drain your health incredibly fast that I got stuck in?
Yeah turns out it's an entirely optional dungeon with no reward other than getting a checkmark on your end of game summary for finishing it.
Which means fighting my way through the final section, outrunning an explosion, and one last difficult boss battle in a cramped arena only to finish it and then realize I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing instead of this! Turns out I just missed a cave somewhere with a funny orb that was necessary to unlock the actual final dungeon, which was no slouch itself!
Fighting through effectively Hell, brings players to a final boss battle with a demon that takes roughly 50 shots with every attack upgrade. Yikes. Dying means fighting through one last annoying section with little landmines to force you to move slowly (and buttons that reveal their locations for a brief period). Luckily, for all its difficulty, the game is a bit kind about handing out a few extra lives in the late game so the situation wasn't as dire as the sealed temple.
You get two endings based on a final choice, both of which feature some nice animations and then a little summary of what you managed to accomplish on your journey through Caethrath. Surprisingly little! As I realized while playing it, I never really seemed to be finishing my quests, just gaining access to new locations.
Overall though, it was a fantastic game, and still one of my favorites for MZX. It definitely isn't easy, but knowing you can skip that temple, I think it's well worth a try for anyone who enjoys these overhead action games.
...And since there was a little bit of time left, we checked out "Stronghold" a demo by the same author released some years later whose preview images definitely had that Caethrath aesthetic to them. And this was quite the fascinating game. A botched scouting mission to figure out if a planet would be worth colonizing leads to a lite survival horror game on a harsh planet. You get multiple weapons which you'll need to deal with ooze that drips from the ceilings and attacks you, plus some form of crafting items, and hunger system where eating fuels your nanobots to heal you (which I'm relaizing is basically Minecraft style health regenernation with a sci-fi feel). There wasn't a ton to discover in it, but it definitely would've been a cool game with a great atmosphere.
♦ Originally streamed on May 18th, 2025 ♦
