At some point in our lives, we've all wanted to be Indiana Jones. He's got a cool hat, he finds ancient, magical artifacts, he knows how to use a whip, and he has a job as a professor at a university that's apparently fine with him leaving for several months to go on life-threatening adventures. He probably even has tenure!

However, for as fun as being a globe-trotting, Nazi-punching archaeologist sounds it's probably a lot harder than it looks. La Mulana 1 & 2 are intensely difficult platformers that show us that if Indiana Jones was real, he probably would have died long before he even reached the Temple Of Doom.

Two Generations Of Suffering

In La Mulana, you play as Lemeza Kosugi, an archaeology professor who is called to a place known as La Mulana. It's considered to be the birthplace of civilization and holds many wondrous, yet terrible secrets that mankind has yet to discover. Meanwhile, in La Mulana 2, you play as Lemeza's daughter Lumisa - this family is great at archaeology, bad at names - who arrives at La Mulana years later to search for her now missing father.

The lore of La Mulana is actually quite fascinating. Without spoiling anything, the interesting, sci-fi alternate history that these games come up with is pretty cool. There are ancient races and strange creatures that you stumble across during your time in these deep, dark caves. It almost makes the player feel like a true archaeologist who's found a previously unknown discovery that could change the world as we know it.

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Throughout the journey, the player will visit a small village with locals who will offer advice and sell goods. They also have a surprising understanding of computer software, as the village elder, Xelpud, will install a texting app onto your device so he can drop hints every so often. In the first game, you'll run into the odd NPC here and there, but the second game introduces a wide array of weird folks. There's also a pretty big tonal shift that occurs between the two games, which turn Xelpud from this:

Into this:

These games actually have a rather surprising sense of humor that helped to alleviate my rage. It was almost like the developers were telling me, "Hey, we intentionally made these games to piss you off. So don't take it too seriously."

Puzzles, Why Did It Have To Be Puzzles?

via Rock Paper Shotgun

Now, it might appear on the surface that these games are designed by someone who's a big fan of Indiana Jones. However, I would argue that it's actually made by people who despise Harrison Ford's alter ego and wish for nothing more than his constant and eternal suffering. These are not easy games. In fact, these are some of the hardest puzzle platformers you can find.

First off, the actual platforming doesn't make you feel like some Mario-like gymnast who can leap and bound around the map. Lemesa and Lumisa control like regular people - well, as regular as a protagonist in a 2D video game can feel - which means you don't have much control of their jumps in mid-air, they take fall damage, and they have to be wary of walking over certain terrain or they'll just fall through the floor. They also each have a whip that can be used to defeat enemies and other items that can be found or purchased along the way.

There's a decent amount of combat involved, which includes the occasional boss fight. The problem with any fight is that these characters are not gladiators or marines. They're just professors who graduated from college and like digging for old stuff. Thus, the combat never feels particularly great and the boss battles are just annoying exercises in pattern memorization.

The real meat and potatoes of the La Mulana series are the puzzles you have to solve deep in the ruins. Trying to figure where to go and how to get there is a constant state of mind in La Mulana 1 & 2. There's no real direction and this can lead to hours of trial and error. Unlocking new areas is entirely dependent on solving these puzzles, which means you might be stuck in one place for an interminable amount of time. Unless you happen to be some kind of video game savant, a lot of time is going to be spent backtracking to different spots to see if you missed something.

That being said, La Mulana definitely seems a lot harder with its puzzles than La Mulana 2, as there seemed to be fewer moments of being completely stuck in the sequel. Regardless, it's still incredibly easy to get lost in La Mulana 1 & 2, which can lead to intense frustration.

At Least There's Good Music Playing While I Die Instantly

A lot of puzzles involve placing a weight down on a switch to activate something. Well, guess what? Sometimes you'll activate a death trap that crushes or kills you instantly. And since La Mulana doesn't have any sort of auto-save - because of course it wouldn't - you can easily lose a ton of progress thanks to one impossible to predict mistake. La Mulana 2 is a bit more lenient with its fast travel, but death is still only one misstep away at any time. A word of advice: save as much as humanly possible.

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In those moments of despair after dying to a sudden trap, it can be easy to decide to quit right there and then. Thankfully, you're driven forward by some awesome music that was likely written specifically to keep the player from going completely mad. The soundtrack is so good that it would often pump me right back up after a nasty fall or dumb death.

The art is also fairly solid with its interesting enemy sprites and bizarre character designs. La Mulana looks alright, but La Mulana 2 definitely adds more color and style to the game's aesthetics. The levels could have used a little more variation though, as they're generally just a series of platforms with enemies marching back and forth waiting to pounce on you.

Indiana Had It Easy Compared To This

I find myself a little conflicted when it comes to the La Mulana games. I often found myself screaming at my Switch in frustration over an impossible puzzle or cheap demise. Yet, for as much as this game raised my blood pressure, it's still strangely compelling. It was too easy to get lost, but once I figured out a puzzle solution on my own I felt like my IQ shot up ten points. Of course, once I was stumped by a puzzle that feeling went away, but La Mulana 1 & 2 can still be quite rewarding.

This is a punishing set of games that plops you into a temple and expects you to get out using your own puzzle-solving prowess. If you're looking for a game on your Switch that takes the idea of Indiana Jones but substitutes the action for obtuse brain-teasers, then look no further. La Mulana 1 & 2 offer up a challenging puzzle experience and figuring your way through these ruins will make you feel smarter than a whip-lashing Harrison Ford.

A Nintendo Switch copy of La Mulana 1 & 2 was provided to TheGamer for this review. La Mulana 1 & 2 are now available on Nintendo Switch.

La Mulana

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