Doman: Grzechy Ardana (Doman: Sins of Ardan) is something of a Golden Axe clone based on a Polish sword-and-sorcery comic drawn by Andrzej Nowakowski.
The player controls one of two characters, Doman himself or his sidekick Baurus, that I assume are the heroes of the comic (it's hard to find information about Doman in English...) and you simply walk down a path slaying everyone dumb enough to get in your way.
The moves are heavily inspired, if not outright swiped from the classic Barbarian, and the controls are similar in how you hold the fire button and then push a direction to perform a specific move. Holding the button and pulling away from an enemy will execute the famous twirling decapitation attack from Barbarian, for instance, and it will decapitate the enemy if their health bar is low enough.
The game was created by World Software, which caused a brief mid-90s stir in Eastern Europe through games that were crudely made but hilariously over the top in their gore and general subject matter. The year before releasing Doman, they made a beat-'em-up called Franko: The Crazy Revenge!, which involved a couple of heroes cleaning up the streets by splattering the blood of street punks all over the place. Not a particularly well-made game, but memorable and funny in a time when simply being edgy and gross was enough to ensure a certain amount of attention. Doman is a bit more advanced than Franko, but only just so. The graphics are little more refined and the controls are a bit easier to use, although it's still very difficult and, like Franko, the levels do go on for a bit. There are some between-level cutscenes and you get the occasional image of Doman reclining on a throne just like Conan did in the movie. The game could have used something like at least one layer of parallax scrolling, but you get the sense that these guys were just having fun cranking out games they wanted to see and were lucky enough to get paid for doing so.
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