I think this is supposed to be outdoors? But as you can tell, there’s not a lot of room for maneuvering.
And even the open areas aren’t really free: exploration only gets you treasures, collectibles, and paths you can’t go down yet / aren’t ‘supposed’ to go down yet. There is no freedom or exploration here, just challenge-solving and combat. For instance, the second battle with pirates sees you - right out of an indoors dungeon area - navigate a confusing tangle of pirate ships and turrets to reach a pre-ordained ending.
It’s split almost 50/50 between two kinds of experiences: one kind where you explore a more open ‘hub’ before proceeding down the correct adventure path, and one kind that’s really just a linear ‘dungeon’ experience. While some areas seem to allow for more exploration and path-choosing, by and large Owlboy is a very linear experience. I figured it’d be something akin to a Metroidvania game, or maybe something Zelda-esque: exploring a large semi-open world, running through challenges and dungeons, and gradually opening up more and more world with an increasingly large set of tools. It’s interesting, though, that looking at this level design and these mechanics, you could be led to assume a certain mechanical structure or archetype for Owlboy. I remember one or two sections where flying was taken away, temporarily otherwise, Owlboy seems to know better than to take away its best asset. Even in the more challenging, let’s call them ‘dungeon’ sections, there is almost no forced platforming.
And the game is well-built to allow and support a lot of neat flying: the levels are wide-open and roomy, with lots of verticality. And the flying is really fun! It gives you such a sense of freedom to just be able to fly around, no investment or cooldown or build-up necessary. Particularly when it comes to flying, the game responds at the drop of a hat. Key to this is that the controls are (by and large) very swift, fluid and engaging. Until its vibrant energy made me want to strike out and adventure! That’s a good emotional reaction for a starting village song! Overall, then, Owlboy is just a treat for the senses. The upbeat chippy beat in the starting town Vellie stands out as a song that I just spent some time listening to. But I do actually remember Owlboy‘s music in places, for good reasons. Generally, if I don’t comment on the sound, that means it was passable enough to fade into background for me. I’m not normally one to comment on sound, usually because I just don’t remember it. You can tell *everything* you need to know about this scene without a single word being said. Regular readers will notice that this is the exact same thing I always do, except this time I get to claim it’s in service of a particular point I’m making instead of just me uploading way too many pretty pictures. And while I could spend a hundred words talking about the why of this, I’ve decided to show instead of tell by just uploading a whole bunch of Owlboy gameplay cutscenes, scattered throughout the body of the rest of the text. The pixel art in this game is nothing short of amazing. While I don’t want to sound like a broken record punning on the wrong kind of animal, it bears repeating just how gorgeous Owlboy is. And don’t worry, we’ll get to those quibbles. I have a few other quibbles, too, but that’s the main gist. It is a little mechanically light, however, and on the large scale the overarching narrative suffers a little from chasing two story beats intermittently. My core take on it is that it is by and large a pretty fun game! It’s beautiful, fairly engaging and fun to play (if not at all what I expected at first), and well-written on the small scale with believable, interesting characters. At this point in time, several hours after these events, I’ve played through all of Owlboy.
0 kommentar(er)
