Kero Kero Cowboy: Modern Game Boy Color game headed to Steam

It’s no secret by this point that I love a platformer, either 2D or 3D, but I’m not too proud to admit that I’m not exactly great at them. Kero Kero Cowboy is a gorgeous little indie game that serves as a reminder of this, but in all the best ways. 

Kero Kero Cowboy was designed and developed for the Game Boy Color by MetagameMike, but it will soon be coming to Steam. There’s a demo available to play right now, and as a lover of platformers, I immediately jumped at the chance to play. 

Wild West platforming

In Kero Kero Cowboy, you play as a Stetson-wearing frog who sets out into the Wild West to take down bandits and outlaws, all while avoiding the local wildlife and plants. If it moves, it’s capable of killing you, which lines up with my own thoughts on the desert regions of the world. 

Your only defense is your ability to jump, which is pretty standard when it comes to any game in which you play as a frog, and your gun, which is admittedly less standard. You have six bullets that you can use to fend off the local critters if they block your path, but you’ll need to make sure you don’t get too trigger-happy, lest you end up without a way forward.

Kero Kero Cowboy plays much as you would expect for any platformer of the type, but it is utterly adorable and inexplicably lovable, particularly the checkpoint mechanic. Every so often you’ll come across a friendly face sitting by a campfire, and you can join them for $10 to cook sausages and save your progress on the level. 

Setting up

Kero Kero Cowboy is a game that can be played, at least on anything other than the Game Boy Color, using either your keyboard or a controller. I tried both, and while both options are easy to navigate, I found that setting up for controller use was definitely the preferable choice. Thankfully, this is easy to do within the settings of the game, and you’re free to change any of the inputs to suit your own playing style. 

Also in the settings, you can change how the game looks. There are different filters to apply that change the entire feel of the game and lean into the retro vibe that you’d expect from any modern Game Boy game. You can add a slight wave to the game with ‘bilinear interpolation’, or add an LCD Grid for a more pixelated effect. 

For someone who is a relative outsider to the idea of modern, indie Game Boy games, there’s something comfortingly nostalgic about the idea of being able to get those vibes while playing through Steam. I miss the simple gameplay loops and graphics, combined with the difficult-by-design mechanics, and Kero Kero Cowboy has reignited my love for 2D platformers in a special way. 

Kero Kero Cowboy is available to purchase in full from MetagameMike’s Itch.io page right now, so you can play the entire game if you want to go that route. If you’d rather have it as part of your Steam library, you’ll have to wait a little while, as it doesn’t have a release date on the platform just yet. But you can always play the demo while you wait.