{"id":501,"date":"2018-06-03T00:50:32","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T04:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=501"},"modified":"2018-06-03T00:50:32","modified_gmt":"2018-06-03T04:50:32","slug":"game-ramblings-72-owlboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=501","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #72 &#8211; Owlboy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.owlboygame.com\/\">More Info from D-Pad Studio<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: Metroidvania<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: Switch<\/li>\n<li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Windows, macOS, Linux, PS4, Xbox One<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>High points are non-gameplay.\u00a0 Story, visuals, audio are all top notch.<\/li>\n<li>Mechanically does enough to get the job done, but is pretty standard.\u00a0 Bosses are pretty simple, not too many upgrades, not much reason to back track.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Add this one to the list of Metroidvania games that I&#8217;m always a sucker for, and it was definitely solid enough to be worth playing through.\u00a0 This was definitely an indie darling as it was in development, and it properly earned a lot of accolades, particularly for its visuals.\u00a0 However, in being a game that did its non-gameplay elements so well, it&#8217;s a bit unfortunate in that the gameplay itself is pretty much hitting the minimum standard, and not really doing much to separate itself from the pack.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_502\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-502\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-502\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_visuals.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-502\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Right from the start this game has fantastic pixel art, and it compares well against the best of the Metroidvanias of recent years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It&#8217;s pretty easy to see from the start where\u00a0<em>Owlboy<\/em> earned its biggest hype from.\u00a0 This game is drop dead gorgeous.\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy for pixel art games to become difficult to play at times from overly busy visuals, but this one escapes all of those traps.\u00a0 The backgrounds are high detail, but use muted color palettes to separate themselves from the foreground.\u00a0 Characters are all fairly low-resolution, but have unique looks of their own so you can immediately tell who is who.\u00a0 Even more important, the character animation is phenomenal.\u00a0 There&#8217;s enough frames of animation for everything to look really fluid, whether in normal traversal or in combat situations.\u00a0 Even little details like character facial reactions during cutscenes lend a lot of life to scenes where 2D games typically have to depend more on text.<\/p>\n<p>This high attention to non-gameplay detail also extends to the story and music.\u00a0 From a non-spoiler perspective, the story focuses on the growth of the main character in trying to learn to be an owl, and how the world around him has gotten to the state it&#8217;s in.\u00a0 The characters he meets with throughout, and those that end up travelling with him are all well written, each with their own motivations as to why they&#8217;re joining the party.\u00a0 As for the soundtrack, it&#8217;s a well orchestrated set of pieces, ranging from lighter pieces in town to high action pieces in battle.\u00a0 Overall, I recommend <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RsJUFN-BkjI\">giving it a listen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_503\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-503\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-503\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_bosses.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-503\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bosses are the high point of combat, even if they tend to be pretty simple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The gameplay on the other hand is a lower point in the game.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not that it&#8217;s bad &#8211; in fact, it hits pretty much all the expected notes for a game of this style.\u00a0 It just doesn&#8217;t really do anything to stand out.<\/p>\n<p>Out of all of this, bosses really are the high point.\u00a0 They&#8217;re pretty standard sort of 2 &#8211; 3 phase fights, with damage being the phase trigger across the board.\u00a0 For the most part, the bosses also introduce new mechanics as they phase transition.\u00a0 However, the bosses themselves are still fairly simple.\u00a0 Typically speaking, you get a new upgrade, and face a boss weak to that upgrade.\u00a0 In the one above, you&#8217;d basically just been using a spin move to knock armor off enemies a bunch, then immediately get this boss.\u00a0 Spin hit the armor off the turtle, shoot it a bunch, repeat.\u00a0 This was pretty much the same thing across all bosses, and it basically meant that they were never really much of a danger.\u00a0 You knew going in what you were going to be expected to use, you&#8217;d have been given an entire level before hand to learn the ability, and you just have to use it to finish.<\/p>\n<p>But again, it&#8217;s not necessarily a bad thing that it went that way.\u00a0 Upgrades are basically in two forms; characters that you can carry with you, and health upgrades earned by collecting coins.\u00a0 The characters were a unique way to handle the typical weapon upgrade.\u00a0 You only earn three &#8211; a standard gunner, a shotgunner, and a spider web launcher &#8211; but their integration into the story and gameplay as a whole was a unique way to give a voice to the upgrades, rather than them just being a pickup in the world.\u00a0 It also gave much greater weight to them coming and going from the party based on the story, and ultimately made the story a lot more impactful.\u00a0 Losing a party member due to something occurring in the world wasn&#8217;t just part of the story, it also meant that your combat strategy was about to drastically change for a while.<\/p>\n<p>However, it also meant that you never really had a reason to back track.\u00a0 While getting 100% of coins to get all optional upgrades is a back track path, the core upgrades were guaranteed along the main path, and I never needed to do the full collecting since I was rarely in danger of being low on health.\u00a0 The end result of all this is that I treated the game less like a Metroidvania, and more like a typical linear action\/adventure game, which probably got me through it quicker than was really intended.<\/p>\n<p><a style=\"font-weight: bold; background-color: transparent;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-504\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/owlboy_upsidedown.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sometimes you just end up riding a boss upside down through a cave. It happens.Realistically, the game is pretty typical of a lot of top tier independent titles.\u00a0 The things where it stands out are pretty high end, and the rest of the game kind of sits in decent but average shape.\u00a0 It&#8217;s obvious that visuals and tech around it were going to be the focus of this game, and they really nailed it.\u00a0 In nailing those things, gameplay looks to be the thing that suffered a bit from lack of development focus, but overall it worked out well.\u00a0 Would I consider this in the upper echelon of Metroidvanias?\u00a0 Not really, but I still have a pretty easy time recommending at least a play through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from D-Pad Studio Genre: Metroidvania Platform: Switch Also Available On: Windows, macOS, Linux, PS4, Xbox One TL;DR High points are non-gameplay.\u00a0 Story, visuals, audio are all top notch. Mechanically does enough to get the job done, but is pretty standard.\u00a0 Bosses are pretty simple, not too many upgrades, not much reason to back &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=501\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #72 &#8211; Owlboy&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,37,83],"tags":[18,35,53,84],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action","category-adventure","category-switch","tag-action","tag-adventure","tag-metroidvania","tag-switch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}