‘The Trial of Kharzoid’ is a Block-Breaking Horror Adventure

The Trial of Kharzoid bounces your skull through gloomy castles and against monstrous foes as it combines horror and block-breaking.

The wizard of the same name as the title has Xyleria under his thumb. Things seem to be locked down pretty well, as the wizard has designed a game to play with his prisoners purely for his entertainment. You get your soul transferred into a magical skull, and if you can bounce your way through his array of traps and dangerous creatures, you’d get set free. Guess he never expected that someone would get themselves captured on purpose so they could get a chance to not only escape the wizard’s traps, but also kill him and free Xyleria.

Being a disembodied skull, there’s not a whole lot you can do besides be bounced around a variety of dangerous fields, pinging into enemies and hazards until you’ve cleared the conditions for that area. However, this isn’t a straight shot to a battle with the wizard. You’ll have to explore the world, interact with NPCs who have some information, and find the tools you’ll need to clear a path to your enemy. Thankfully, you can pull up a map and move to a different area if you’ve already cleared the path to that screen. You’re not stuck having to clear maps again and again. However, there is nothing easy about your quest. Power-ups (and power-downs – watch out for those) can help you a bit, but you’ll need to get pretty good at bouncing your skull around.

The Trial of Kharzoid is a neat blend of genres as it adds adventure and creepy horror elements to brick-breaking play, resulting in something that’s highly challenging but compelling to work your way through. It just makes me wish I was a little better at getting my paddle into the right place (and the game adds all kinds of neat variants on how your paddle works, too).

The Trial of Kharzoid is available now on itch.io.

About The Author

Joel Couture

Joel has been covering indie games for various sites including IndieGames.com, Siliconera, Gamasutra, Warp Door, CG Magazine, and more over the past seven years, and has written book-length studies on Undertale and P.T.. Joel is constantly on the lookout for digital experiences that push the boundaries of what games can be, and seeks to delve into the creative process, meanings, and emotion labor that goes into the work of artists worldwide.