The Good Old Days Review: Reliving the Wonder of Childhood Adventure

The Good Old Days wears its love of The Goonies proudly, right down to the scrappy kids, buried treasure, and a town that feels one storm away from foreclosure.

You play as Sean, who needs $30,000 by midnight to save his house, only to have a shady loan shark tell him his ancestors buried treasure all over town, and then promptly kidnap his friends. As a “helpful” gesture, he hands Sean an unlimited supply of bombs.

It’s ridiculous, and also charming. It’s exactly the kind of setup that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a lost Saturday-morning adventure from the ’80s. The problem isn’t the premise, it’s what the game asks you to do with it. What starts as a playful treasure hunt soon runs into repetition, uneven combat, and a run system that constantly interrupts the momentum.

Four Kids, One Good Attack

The game’s headline feature is its four-kid swap system. You start alone as Sean, but as you rescue your friends, you gain control of the full quartet, each with distinct movement and a unique ability.

Sean plants bombs to open paths, Foodie headbutts enemies with ease, Bruce dashes across fragile floors, and Doc slips through tight cracks. In theory, this opens me up a wealth of exploratory possibilities, and that’s exciting.

In practice, combat leans almost entirely on one character. Foodie has the only reliable attack. His headbutt is quick, safe, and requires no setup. Sean must plant bombs and wait for them to detonate, a clumsy solution against skittish bats and darting rats.

So every time an enemy appeared, I defaulted to Foodie. Then I switched back so I could actually navigate the space. You repeat this dance constantly (swap to fight, swap to move) and the rhythm quickly becomes grating.

Boss encounters, however, reveal the system’s potential. These fights hint at a version of the game where swapping feels like strategy: one kid’s skill triggers the right path, another’s exposes a weakness.

For a moment, swapping feels like a miniature test of strategy and planning. These flashes show the potential buried in the design, a potential that rarely carries over into the rest of the game.

Platforming Does the Heavy Lifting

Outside of combat, the system finally breathes. The Good Old Days stands out for its flexibility. Meaning, I swapped characters because I wanted to, not because the game forced me to.

Bruce can sprint across weak floors, Foodie pushes heavy blocks, Doc slips through narrow gaps, and Sean blows open paths. With these abilities, you can tackle obstacles in multiple ways, discover hidden shortcuts, and feel clever for spotting them.

The town itself rewards curiosity. The world is sprawling and full of hazards and you might find tools that neutralize those hazards. For instance, rubber boots that let you walk across electrified floors while locked doors often hide alternative routes if you look closely. It’s this freedom that makes exploration genuinely satisfying.

The Game Wants You to Finish It Many Times

For a while, the game hits a sweet rhythm. You explore, find tools, carve better paths, repeat. Just like most metroidvania games like Hollow Knights.

But that rhythm is fragile. The game’s run structure interrupts the momentum you’ve built. Suddenly, the freedom you enjoyed becomes constrained by repeated resets, forcing you to relearn rooms, recollect upgrades, and redo side quests.

On your first playthrough, you need $30,000 to save Sean’s house. On the next, $60,000. Each ending teases a bigger story, so to see everything, you have to keep starting over.

That could work but here, the resets bite harder than they should. Max health upgrades, maps revealing hidden bombs and treasure, fast travel points: everything disappears with each new run.

Even side quests that felt rewarding in the first playthrough lose their value once you start again. What was a discovery turns into repetition. The game constantly asks you to rebuild the basics instead of building on your previous progress.

Some later runs shake things up: character placements shift, new enemies appear, and bosses force different strategies. These tweaks show some thought, but they don’t fix the core problem.

The loop feels like busy work, a grind wrapped in nostalgia, and it saps the excitement the game earned in my earlier runs.

A Throwback to the Goonies

Visually, The Good Old Days nails the ‘80s vibe. Pixel art is detailed, biomes are distinct, and animations are smooth. Bosses feel creative, quirky, and alive, like they belong in a Saturday morning adventure cartoon. The world looks and feels like a lost cartridge from another era.

The story has charm too. It hints at mysteries and larger stakes across its multiple endings, and some moments land with a soft, bittersweet touch. But no narrative thread is strong enough to justify the grind.

Most endings feel like small rewards for big effort, enough to make you smile, not enough to make you forget the repetition.

Final Verdict: Above Average

The Good Old Days has a world full of charm, and exploration is satisfying when the swap system allows choice. But over time, repetition takes over. Combat rarely clicks, and the run structure drains momentum, turning clever mechanics into a chore.

This is a game for players who value mood and nostalgia above steady progression. If you love the look, the playful mechanics, and the sense of ‘80s adventure, you might forgive the grind.

If you crave tight systems, meaningful progression, and a sense of forward momentum, this one may burn you out before the story really lands.

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