Influences behind Montana De la Cruz Vs The Army of Darkness

Hey everyone! It’s been a few weeks since I launched the game… and I thought it would be fun to share a bit about the inspirations behind it. 

When I started making this project, I wanted to create something that felt like a lost "8-bit-ish" adventure, a mix of classic platforming, exploration, and cinematic atmosphere. But this time without the restrictions of color palettes or the hardware limitations of that era.

On the game side, the main influences are titles I grew up with, I even made some statues for them haha:

• The Goonies II ( With its quirky design, this project actually started as a Goonies II clone, but along the way it evolved into something completely different!) How the platforms work, the waterfalls, and other tiny details are just a replica of this game.
  
  
  
  

• Super Mario Bros 1, 3  To me, these are the gold standard of 2D platformers.  Having it as a master reference is simply a must.
  I wanted to create a full level in a Super Mario style (totally out of context, haha!) But since I just wanted to finish the project, I ended up adding a small area in the last stage to satisfy my inner child.
  
  
  

• Star Wars (NES). This one might sound strange, but I actually took inspiration from some of its levels, for example, the Sandcrawler served as a reference for the ‘Ship of the Damned’ stage.
  I think I'm terrible at level design, so I just tried to replicate some random levels from some random games I played as a child :)

• ...And of course, Castlevania (I think people noticed something regarding this!).
  Actually the old design for Montana was just a redraw of the Trevor Belmont sprites! 
  
  
  

From movies, the DNA is even clearer:

• Indiana Jones  (Montana is basically Indy… with a bit of Crocodile Dundee vibes, haha).
  
  

• Evil Dead (Montana’s personality is heavily inspired by Ash Williams. Cocky, stubborn; whip first, ask later :)
  
  And of course the "Army of Darkness" name in the title!

• What we do in the shadows tv series (I was actually watching it when I first started the project, and I borrowed the surname ‘De la Cruz’ from Guillermo (aka Gizmo). It just felt appropriate for the kind of comic-pulp-horror vibe I was aiming for.)
  

• And oddly enough, the villain from Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child served me as the inspiration for Anatnom, the final boss, with a sparkle of Lovecraftian ‘legs’. Actually, this guy originally started as a knock-off of Nightmare from Kirby’s Adventure, haha.
  
  

All of this is wrapped with some Lovecraftian ideas that may (or may not) come through in the game — but they were always in the back of my mind while building the world.

I’m sure I’m missing something, but oh well..!

Hope you enjoy the rest of your day!