Free As A Bird Now: The Owlboy Review
Video games are often about giving the player the power to defy insurmountable odds. Whether this comes through taking on countless enemies, defeating a world ending plot or developing the skills to take on powerful foes. No matter if these skills are given to the player or something that is learned through various trial and error, games are designed to make the player feel like a hero and provide a power fantasy unlike any other.
Owlboy takes these staples of video game tropes and turns them on their head. While most games set you up as the Joseph Campbell-esque chosen one, Owlboy sets you up as someone different.
You’re not an all-powerful hero or someone with a plethora of skills. You’re a misfit, a failure of your own kind and someone who struggles to handle the most basic of video game functions. Fear not, though, as it’s through Owlboy’s outward display of inadequacies, do you learn the importance of exploration, the importance of friends and the surprising versatility of not fighting enemies head to head, but rather exploiting their weaknesses.
Owlboy’s main hero Otus, an outcast in his own floating village due to his inability to perform the most common of 2D platformer functions such as jumping and attacking, is soon thrust into an adventure that not only puts his own village but his entire world as a long thought dormant evil threatens the entire planet.
This plays into what Owlboy’s core gameplay is: a 2D side-scrolling “Metroidvania” style adventure that encourages players to explore their surroundings and hunger for the secrets that lie just out of reach. Like the games Owlboy takes inspiration from, secrets often appear within view but out of reach, letting the player know that reaching them is possible, but the right character combination is needed.
During this adventure, Otus will encounter a handful of misfits who after joining him on his quest, provide some colorful dialog and useful abilities that become essential to the story and gameplay. Otus and his friends can combine together to not only battle enemies, but also explore and uncover more of the world than before. While Otus soon discovers the ability to fly on his own, he cannot attack, making some friends invaluable who can shoot, attack and provide Otus with the ability to battle enemies, bosses and solve puzzles. Once Otus finds these new friends, he is able to switch out with a simple press of a button, letting players move through each of the beautiful environments with ease and without the need to backtrack and slow down the pacing. The game is always presenting the player with a new puzzle, new enemy combination or new world to immerse them in, always encouraging to try something new.
Over the course of this 10-hour adventure, Owlboy takes the players to some beautiful environments. Along with some highly detailed hand-drawn sprites and highly detailed backgrounds ranging from crumbling temples to lava filled lairs and dusty libraries, each of the environments has a visual aesthetic reminiscent of older LucasArts SCUMM titles, bringing to mind The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. If this game had been released on consoles or PC in the mid 90’s, you would be hard-pressed to notice a difference. Developer D-Pad Studio deserves praise for taking the golden age staple of gaming and making sure it maintains its 90’s era luster while still being extremely playable by modern standards.
Owlboy comes as a fresh breath of air and a stark contrast for anyone believing that video games are losing their creativity or indie titles are becoming too pretentious for their own good. In a genre that worships their heroes as being all-powerful beings of destruction, Owlboy reminds us that strength doesn’t always come from ourselves, but those who stick with us through the rough patches in life.
Being a hero doesn’t always come from our victories but what we learn to do with our defeats. It may seem like a standard indie 2D game, but Owlboy contains surprising depth in both its gameplay and narrative that effortlessly combines them together for a fun and joyful ride, even if I wish the play time could have been double what it was.
While the real world and the fiction that mirrors it might be becoming more isolated and cold, Owlboy throws on a thick blanket, give you that cup of warm cocoa and asks you to stay a while.
You won’t regret it if you do.
Final Score: 8.5/10
This game was played on PC with a Xbox 360 controller and purchased through Valve’s Steam Store.
