Owlboy

I can't believe I just heard about this game two months ago...it's incredible! GRAPHICS Pixel art is some of the most beautiful ever. There are so many unique animations that sometimes it feels like a pixel-art film with great gameplay. Character's style is like Mega Man Zero on GBA. Background graphics are like Flink/Adventures of Lomax. Quality of background animations are like Lucar Arts' 90's adventures. MUSIC & SOUND As some others have mentioned, it also feels like Lucas Arts' iMuse system, where it dynamically changes depending on the gameplay. The compositions are really inspiring and pull you in. It's very modern with retro touches. The sound fx are all crunchy during combat and soothing while exploring. You can even play some bongos! GAMEPLAY I've found the mechanics really interesting, you have control of every axis while flying and new abilities pop up all the time. Exploring and combat feels like it would fit in a Mega Man Zero game perfectly. The flying is quite different, though. That's more like Gargoyle's Quest. BONUS There's a NES console hidden away in the lab...did you find it?

This game has nice qualities at times (opening scene and pixel art), but gameplay is derivative and trite. The puzzles are very easy. Every boss requires dying once to figure out their pattern, then you easiliy beat the boss. Clearly there were good creative folks involved in making this game - it has a lot of potential to be reworked. Gave up playing midway through because it was boring.

I was really impressed, and the game built up to the last boss really well. The mechanics were so charming and congruent with the artistic expression. For example: You don't get "powers" instead you accumulate friends, and their relationships with you are important! It fosters a really nice story that I thought was funny, warm, and beautiful. Very well done!!

No doubt that Owlboy is a good game. The graphics, story and world design are pretty good, there are some nice mechanics like lifting objects, spinning wheels etc. and it's not excessively difficult like other retro games. It's not perfect though and while I enjoyed it most of the time, I'll focus on the not so great aspects. First of all, moving and shooting is just not as smooth and fun as with other games like Cave Story or Momodora. Also, when carrying your sidekick, the team is just a bit too big for the screen size/layout. This is aggravated by the very annoying choice to not scroll smoothly all the time, but only when you reach the edge of a screen - at least at times. This causes you to bump into enemies and traps since the game doesn't you to allow to see ahead without any proper reason. There're also other smaller design flaws like enemies spawning almost directly into you (apes), using the same button/key for grabbing things and dropping down etc. The boss battles tend to be a bit of PITA since they rely on changing or dropping your sidekick all the time and this mechanism doesn't work too well at least with mouse (wheel) control. It's also annoying that you drop your sidekick when you're hit and tons of minor things like this. I also found the large dark areas pretty much annoying. Plus there's no way to fast travel or even a map that shows you where you are. Anyway, the peak of frustrating design is the "Boguin cannon" mini game with its terrible controls and inconsistent speed. I still managed to finish it somehow and get the spectre cloak but it really was a major pain in the rear. There are two positive things though that are specifically worth mentioning: you can steer also with the cursor keys (in parallel to ASDW) which is a big plus in some precision jumping towards the end and the terrible Boguin cannon thing. Also it's nice that there's a portal before the final boss fight that brings you back to the village for unfinished business.

I had a mostly very nice time with this game. It feels like it was made by very creative and aesthetic people. I would recommend it to others, although it's maybe not so polished in gameplay and maybe story-wise, I definitely enjoyed it!