Solo developer Alevgor began Haunted Lands as a casual side project, intended as a spiritual, fan-made sequel to the Dangerous Dave intellectual property. What started as a weekend tribute has evolved into something far larger.The game releases in full on March 10.
Before John Romero became synonymous with the first-person shooter, he created a scrappy side-scrolling platformer called Dangerous Dave.The 1988 platform game was developed for the Apple II and MS-DOS as an example game to accompany his article about his GraBASIC compiler.Among all Dangerous Dave sequels, Romero says Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion is the best Dave ever created. That 1990 sequel showcased something unusual at the time: graphic violence rendered in 8-bit form.
The technical innovation mattered more than the gore.The game utilised an advanced side-scrolling engine that served as a direct prototype for the technology later employed in id's Commander Keen series, demonstrating Romero's growing expertise in fast-paced platforming mechanics. These weren't throwaway games. They were laboratories where Romero and his collaborators experimented with technology that would eventually power Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
Yet Dave faded from memory almost immediately. Once Romero and co-founders John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, and Tom Hall left Softdisk to form id Software in 1991, the Dave character was left behind. Subsequent sequels produced by Softdisk without Romero's involvement lacked the spark of the originals.
Alevgor's Haunted Lands represents something important: the indie game ecosystem's way of preserving creative lineage."At first, it was a small tribute to Dangerous Dave, but the more I worked on it, the more I realised its potential," said Alevgor.An earlier version of the indie title, called the Burial Grounds build, was released on Itch.io in 2023 and received positive feedback from fans of retro-inspired games. "The prototype of Haunted Lands was warmly received, which motivated me even more," the developer recalled.
The new game modernises its inspiration without abandoning the formula.Players choose from six distinct heroes across three classes: Gunners, Mages, and Beasts. Each class offers unique abilities, including special moves and utilities, allowing players to find a playstyle that suits them.The Steam page promises a significant power curve for its playable characters, with you able to acquire artefacts that will "change your character's skills entirely."
The violence has certainly escalated.While the game nails the look and feel of the Dave games, it's also significantly gnarlier than Romero and co's original design. The initial level sees you splitting cultists in half, eviscerating goblins, and tearing floating cat-blobs with snake-tongues to shreds. Where the original Dave games felt like Mario with a shotgun, Haunted Lands embraces its darker side fully.
What's revealing here is that a solo developer from outside the gaming industry's power centres saw value in preserving a thirty-six-year-old platformer that the industry itself had discarded. Haunted Lands won't redefine game design or topple commercial giants. But it reminds us that gaming's heritage isn't maintained by nostalgic reboots from major studios. It's maintained by developers like Alevgor, working in solitude, who believe that the strange experiments of 1988 deserve to live on.