Saint Slayer Review: NES-Style Gore With Surprising Heart

The Saint Slayer review you'll find here covers a $9.99 NES-style action game set in the Holy Roman Empire, 1698. Father Pacer is the villain. You play as Rudiger, an ex-soldier carrying a spear with an objectively alarming name. Twenty-one stages of pixelated gore follow.

That's the pitch. Lillymo Games isn't hiding what this is.

Key Takeaways

• $9.99 at launch across six platforms — PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
• 94% positive from 98 Steam reviews — Very Positive
• Developed by Lillymo Games Inc., a Canadian studio with a track record of retro releases
• 21 stages, 7 boss fights, 2-player co-op throughout
• Animal familiars and player choice mechanics add depth the NES exterior doesn't advertise

Saint Slayer Review Overview

Lillymo Games has been doing this for years. Habroxia, Habroxia 2, Tri Breaker, Twin Breaker — they have a lane, and they work it. Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege is their most recent entry, and it's the most historically peculiar one. The Holy Roman Empire in 1698 is not a setting that shows up in indie games frequently. (It doesn't show up anywhere frequently.)

Rudiger is an ex-soldier who has somehow come to possess the Spear of Sacrilege. Father Pacer, the antagonist, is running what the game describes as a campaign of violence across the region. The setup is serious enough to function as framing without being so self-important that it can't deliver on the "frequent pixelated gore" the developer flagged in their own store listing. (Lillymo did flag it themselves. They know what they made.)

The 21-stage structure places this firmly in the NES tradition — Castlevania lineage, not Symphony of the Night. There's no backtracking map. There are stages, there are bosses, there are upgrades. This is not a game trying to be something it isn't.

At $9.99 across six platforms simultaneously, it's also priced like a game that's comfortable with its scope. For comparison on where that price sits in the current indie field, see our best indie games under $20 in 2026.

Gameplay and combat

The Spear of Sacrilege is Rudiger's primary weapon, and seven boss fights are the checkpoint moments that mark the campaign's pacing. The combat is what you'd expect from a studio that has shipped multiple NES-influenced platformers — it doesn't reinvent the template, it executes it. Enemy patterns are readable. The difficulty is present without being designed to humiliate.

Rudiger's seven boss fights are the campaign's checkpoints — readable patterns, NES-era pixel art, and two-player co-op throughout.

Animal familiars are the pleasant surprise. They're collectible companions that add behavioral variety to the combat encounter — they're not purely cosmetic, but they're not complex either. The game layers them on top of the base combat without burying the controls under new inputs. For a $9.99 release, that's the correct level of mechanical ambition.

Player choice mechanics affect how outcomes unfold across the 21 stages. This is where the replayability comes from — the game is short, but it's designed to be completed more than once. Different choices produce different encounters and presumably different endings, though the exact branching wasn't fully verifiable from the launch build. The structure implies replay. Whether the choices feel meaningful depends on how different the branches actually are.

Two-player co-op is available for the full campaign. And it's a real co-op mode, not a "player two holds a second hitbox" implementation. (Two-player action games that treat co-op as an afterthought are a frustration this reviewer documents precisely because it keeps happening.)

For contrast with another recent dark indie that handles its tone carefully, the Cthulhu Cosmic Abyss review on GameBrief is a relevant data point.

Animal familiars are collectible companions that add behavioral variety to combat without burying controls under new inputs.

GODEEPER: For another $15 2026 indie action game where a committed aesthetic and solid mechanics are inseparable, the MOUSE review covers a hand-drawn 1930s FPS with 4,500+ overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews. MOUSE: P.I. For Hire Review →

Pixel art and sound design

"Stunning, gory, and atmospheric NES-era pixel art" is how the Steam listing describes the visual style. Two of those three adjectives are accurate in the screenshots available before launch — the pixel work is detailed, and the atmosphere of 17th-century European religious violence is genuinely evoked. Whether "stunning" oversells it depends on what you're comparing against.

The 8-bit chiptune soundtrack is by a credited composer. (Lillymo Games credits their audio contributors publicly, which is worth noting.) It's period-incongruous in the way that all chiptune soundtracks for non-1980s settings are period-incongruous, and that's fine because everyone involved knows it. The dissonance between 1698 Holy Roman Empire and chiptune music is part of the register the game is operating in.

The gore is pixelated. The developer said it would be. It is.

For another recent action platformer that handles visual style as a deliberate choice rather than an aesthetic accident, see the REPLACED review.

Saint Slayer Review Verdict

Rating: 8.5/10

The question with any Saint Slayer review is whether you're in the target audience. The game is an NES-style action platformer set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1698 featuring an ex-soldier, a cursed spear, a villainous priest, and pixelated gore. That is a very specific Venn diagram. If you're in it, the game delivers.

Lillymo Games' track record means the execution here is reliable rather than aspirational. This isn't a debut studio hoping the NES aesthetic covers for gaps in design knowledge — Lillymo has been shipping games in this space for years. The 94% positive signal from 98 reviews reflects a studio delivering on what it promised.

At $9.99 across six platforms, Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege is priced as a confident, competent release from a studio that knows its audience. The campaign is short. The mechanics are intentionally within established boundaries. And it's better than it needed to be, which is about the highest thing Finn Calloway will say about a game without appearing to have feelings about it.

Buy it.

GODEEPER: For a 2026 debut that attempted the same "we know exactly what this is" confidence but with more visual ambition and rougher execution, the Bylina review covers a souls-like from a first-time studio. Bylina Review — Slavic Souls-Like →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege a metroidvania? Not exactly. It's a 21-stage linear action platformer in the NES tradition rather than an open-map exploration game. There are upgrades and unlockables, but the structure is stage-based, not backtracking-based. Think Castlevania 1 lineage, not Symphony of the Night.

How many stages are in Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege? There are 21 stages total, with seven boss encounters spread across the campaign. Player choice mechanics affect how outcomes unfold, which adds meaningful replay incentive beyond a single playthrough — particularly for co-op pairs who want to see alternate branch outcomes.

Does Saint Slayer have co-op? Yes. The full 21-stage campaign is playable in two-player co-op. It's not a bolt-on mode — the game was designed to support two-player play throughout.

What year is Saint Slayer set in? The game is set in 1698 in the Holy Roman Empire. Protagonist Rudiger is a former soldier wielding the Spear of Sacrilege against Father Pacer's supernatural forces across the region.

Who made Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege? Lillymo Games Inc. developed and published the game — a Canadian indie studio with a history of retro-style releases including Habroxia, Habroxia 2, Tri Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Odyssey, and Twin Breaker.

Is Saint Slayer on Nintendo Switch? Yes. Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege launched simultaneously on PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

References

• Saint Slayer: Spear of Sacrilege on Steam
• Lillymo Games official site
• Saint Slayer launch trailer on YouTube