Apotheon

Apotheon takes the silhouette-on-terracotta look of Attic black-figure vases and animates it into a side-scrolling action game. Zeus has stopped the gods sending sun, harvest and rain to mortals, leaving Earth to freeze and starve. Nikandreos, a Greek farmer-turned-hero, scales Olympus to take the gods' powers by force.

Combat is bronze-age physical: shields block angled blows, spears outrange swords, arrows run out faster than expected and looted weapons break with use. Every god guards their own zone of Olympus and demands a different fight, from Artemis stalking you in pine forest to Apollo in a sun-blinding palace.

Alientrap built the game with single-player as the primary mode, fully voiced legendary cast, and a one-on-one local multiplayer arena for friends to duel. The Iliad gets quoted between fights, and the soundtrack by Marios Aristopoulos earned a BAFTA nomination.