Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first few minutes of Artefakt Przodków have a clean, compelling rhythm. You steer Lieutenant Max Graham through a labyrinth on the Moon, float with an unlimited-fuel jetpack, and try not to linger against the monsters roaming the rooms. Flight is the crucial ingredient: rather than simply trudging along platforms, you can probe high corners and slip through dangerous spaces. That makes exploration feel active from the start.

Progress comes from finding useful objects and putting them to practical use, such as locating explosives to destroy a wall. It is a familiar adventure-game structure distilled into arcade action: find a thing, remember the obstacle it solves, and push farther into the maze. Carrying only three items at once gives these decisions some welcome bite. You cannot just scoop up everything and postpone thinking; eventually, you need to decide what is worth holding onto.

There is pressure in nearly every room. Enemy contact steadily drains health rather than ending a run instantly, which gives you a little room to escape, but it also makes prolonged searching hazardous. Death costs a life, so aimless wandering can turn from exciting to frustrating when you know an answer is somewhere in the maze but have not yet connected the right item to the right barrier. The completion percentage on the status bar is a smart nudge, though: it makes unexplored territory feel tangible and gives thorough explorers a reason to keep mapping the place in their head.

Graphics

The side-view, fixed-screen layout suits the game’s maze structure. You move room by room rather than through a continuously scrolling world, and the status bar’s completion percentage gives each newly visited screen a clear sense of progress. The most distinctive visual element supported by the action is Max’s jetpack flight, which makes vertical space part of every room instead of mere background.

Story

The setup is pleasingly direct sci-fi pulp. Humanity has encountered a hostile alien civilization, war is close, and Max is sent to the Moon to uncover a hidden starfighter fleet in an ancient base. You are not asked to untangle a complicated political conflict before playing; the looming invasion gives the mission urgency immediately.

The ancient moonbase is a good fit for the game’s structure. A labyrinth full of barriers, monsters, and scattered tools makes more sense when you are searching a long-abandoned installation for something powerful enough to matter in a war. The story mainly serves as a frame for exploration, but it is a stronger frame than a generic “escape the maze” premise.

Do not come here expecting the narrative to carry the experience minute to minute. The drama comes from your own slow advance: surviving one more hostile room, finding a useful object, and seeing the completion number rise. For a game built around maze discovery, that is enough motivation, even if the central goal remains straightforward.

Overall Experience

Artefakt Przodków is at its best when you stop treating the Moon as a sequence of screens and start treating it as a place you are gradually learning. Routes become familiar, suspicious walls become potential leads, and an item that once seemed arbitrary can become the key to a whole new section. That gradual shift from confusion to confidence is the game’s real payoff.

Its rougher edge is the same thing that gives it character. Constant monster pressure and limited carrying capacity can make backtracking feel punishing, especially if you have taken the wrong tools with you. Still, the jetpack prevents the exploration from becoming too plodding, and the health system gives mistakes a little texture before they become fatal.

Give it a chance if you enjoy compact, demanding maze adventures where progress depends on observation and persistence rather than a constant stream of new set pieces. It will not flatter impatient play, but it has a satisfying arcade-adventure core: fly, search, survive, and slowly crack open an alien lunar labyrinth.

Retro Replay Score

6.8/10