If you’re like us, you’re eagerly awaiting the second season of Netflix’s massive hit show Stranger Things, set to be released in its entirety on October 27th. They say idle hands are the devil’s playthings, so the streaming giant has teamed up with indie developers BonusXP to give you a Stranger Things mobile game . And unlike many other entertainment based game tie-ins (I’m looking at you, E.T.), this one is pretty awesome.
If BonusXP wanted to keep things authentic to 1983 when Stranger Things was set, the game would have Atari 2600 or ColecoVision graphics. Fortunately they aged it up a bit into the era of 16-bit graphics to give us an adventure game that pays homage to a lot of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis classics. And just as the show was littered with endless homages to classic science fiction and horror movies, this one does the same for video games.
The look and style has overtones of Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, River City Ransom, Paperboy, and Final Fantasy, but the gameplay has been cleaned up to make it less of a frustrating slog than playing emulators on your touchscreen tends to be. The plot loosely follows the first season of the show but isn’t afraid to take liberties in the name of fun and new experiences. Unlocking different characters gives you new abilities which then allow you to open new areas in earlier levels. For a free mobile game, it’s surprisingly deep (and addictive).
The Stranger Things mobile game is available now for both iOS and Android, so what are you waiting for? For fans of oldschool retro gaming, it’s definitely something that’ll help scratch that itch if you haven’t managed to get your hands on a SNES Classic.