Cursed Gem is a pretty charming and amusing challenging platformer out now

I have to admit, Cursed Gem is quite a nice surprise. Throwing in a little comedy into a challenging pixel-art platformer. Note: key provided by the developer.

You play as Oliver, off on a quest to explore a newly uncovered mine in search of the perfect Diamond to help propose to your beloved. As you might expect, things don't go as planned and you end up getting trapped, cursed to never die but never be able to leave. Lucky for you, there's a friendly talking skeleton named Jerry to guide you on your way to make it out alive.

Feature Highlight:

• Single player adventure marked by powerful challenge, deadly traps and precision platforms.
• ​Explore and overcome a huge cave with more than 10 levels.
• ​More than 80 rooms with different designs: traps, puzzles, impossible jumps ...
• ​Different difficulty modes that change the behavior of checkpoints.
• ​A "nightmare" difficulty mode: Play the entire adventure in the dark, with only a light helmet.
• ​Exchange messages on the walls with other players. In true Dark Souls style.
• ​Decipher a cryptic runic language that you will find on the walls of the cave.
• ​12 skins to customize your player. One of them being a well-known gentleman...
• ​55 achievements that will make you feel good about yourself.
• ​Soundtrack composed by Horror Pen & Shote.

Linux support is excellent, since it was built with the brilliant Godot Engine. No problems encountered.

The dialog in Cursed Gem reminds me of Slay the Spire, using fancy wobbly text to convey emotion and important bits, it's amusingly done. I shouldn't laugh but the English translation is also what makes it slightly funny. It's not terrible but there's a few issues that made it a bit more amusing than it probably should be. The developer AikonCWD, is from Spain so English is not their first language. The music too helps the slightly comedic atmosphere that genuinely together put a bit of a smile on my face.

As for the actual gameplay the developer mentioned to me that their aim was something like a mix of Celeste, Super Meat Boy and The End is Nigh and they actually hit a good note between all of of them I think. If you love repeatable platformers to get better times, collect everything and challenge yourself then Cursed Gem should be next on your list.

You can find Cursed Gem on Steam.