Alwa's Awakening

Love the game. not too hard. easy pick up and play for an hour. puzzles aren't too hard. don't think too much about them or try to do some crazy jumping and using items. in time, all things will become clear.

Overall, the game is a nice little metroidvania with mediocre combat and a repetative soundtrack. The platforming is decent, but suffers from some questionable puzzle/platforming choices. Visuals: Retro style, but with proper enhancements. The pixel graphics are nice, but somewhat samey. The sprites are well made and animate cleanly. Narrative: Not much, but nothing offensive. You are Zoe and have been summoned from a far off land to help the land of Alwa free itself from the evil Vicar. It's almost comical how incompetent the locals are. Mechanics: Swing your staff to hit an enemy. The bosses are pretty lackluster despite the game boasting about it's difficulty. The main part of the game is the puzzle/platforming. The spells are intended to help you traverse the world, but this can get tedious. Little things like like needing a block just to reach a high ledge when a high jump would work. It makes re exploring the world uninteresting. Also, I have 8 main buttons on my controller. Why are 5 of them unused? Holding up to cast a spell then R1 to switch spells is terrible. Presentation: I don't like when games condescend me and Alwa seems to enjoy doing this. There is an 'assist' mode which really just adds basic features, but the message reminds you that this game was intended to be a challenge! One of the assist options is to add items to the map (but not all items) which I turned on, but the game reminds you constantly when you die (ASSIST MODE IS ON) as though it's a mark of shame. Items being on maps is pretty normal. Don't insult me because I don't have a memory suited to rememeber each and every room in the game. You have to find nearly every power up so the only thing left to collect are the orbs which are only used to reduce boss HP, but the bosses are simple so I left many orbs uncollected because I didn't have the powerup to reach them wasn't worth going back for (orbs are not marked on the map even with assist on).

At first sight, I was not that impressed. It was more of a "oh no, not yet another random 2D platformer". But after 30 mins of playing I got the metroidvania feeling. It actually reminded me of the old NES game Ufouria/Hebereke combined with Salomons Key and Metroid. Not that I'm a fan of Solomons Key puzzles, but It was a perfect balance of those kind of puzzles and it kind of made sense to the game mechanics. While writing I'm at the Beholder and I've destroyed the three other guardians. I'm very impressed and I regret I didn't buy the second one as well on the Sale. I have to wait to the next sale ;)

A good metroidvania that looks and handles just like a NES game, unfortunately marred by bullshit difficulty, that might be just a tad too difficult for you to swallow. I nevertheless enjoyed it very much. I also had to look up 2 things that stopped my progress. It took a little over 9 hours to finish.

It's a bit-of-metroidvania puzzle-platformer in an 8-Bit style with a LOT of QQL compared to the olds. Precice controls, only slightly infuriating hitboxes, persistency through death.... When you start out it's rather bland. The style is neat, but the pacing seems awefully slow, the difficulty is low and the bosses are boring with 2-3 moves and no phases. After the first hour id prolly woud have went with 2 stars. Thing is: You can play it much more aggressively than you firts might have imagined. And there are quite a lot of speedrunning techs to make it even smoother. This is by design, since at least one of the achievements, that GoG doesn't have, pretty much has you sequence break the game. What pushed it to 4 stars was the area before the final boss, which is pretty much a gauntlet of (platforming)puzzles. You finally have to use all of the abilities, and the difficulty is finally at NES-Level. And some of the tracks will get bloody stuck in your head. The bosses really could use some work tho, Once you get used to the weird tracking the enemies do (they don't lead their shouts, it's more of a ..lag? They aim where you were at the start of their shooting animation, not where you are when they actually shoot). And it really could get going faster. Some of the optional stuff is also rather hard to find with no hints..but well, checking waterfalls is kind of a tradition by now.