Owlboy

OwlBoy has been one of the most Beautiful games I have played. A game that was in development for 9 years and I can really see why. The whole game feels like the biggest passion project ever, with charming characters, A beautiful soundtrack, a well written story and visuals that will just have you awe struck throughout the whole playthrough. Seriously, Everything I mentioned blends together so perfectly that this feels like a masterful symphony of art.

I cannot get over how beautiful this game looks, I have said in other reviews on how the pixel art in some games is very good but god damn Owlboy is just on a whole different level. To me, Metal Slug has always been one of the best looking 16-bit games that has ever been created, and if you look at it you can see that it still holds up very well and not a lot of things have come close. Owlboy is now my new highest Standard, im serious, the pixel art detail is out of this world. I sort of wish they would hire the artist to make a new Metal Slug game because holy hell, its so insane. This game visually is officially timeless.

The soundtrack of the game is a lovely orchestra where it fits the mood perfectly for every area/level you explore. It switches from very somber tones that encapsulate the night time feelings of watching the stars to a beautiful score for adventuring that will get you ready for whats to come and beats that encapsulate the dangers of the fights you present yourself in. Such a wonderful auditory experience with great sound design all around.

The story of the game is written expertly as you follow a boy that is not good at anything, not even his own natural talents, as you go on an adventure with other characters that are also looked down upon because they tend to screw up. All of them band together to prove to everyone that even the lowest skilled folks can create a huge impact on the world. You get attached to the them in their voyage as you see how from the start they were strangers to one another but then become close friends towards the end that look out for each other.

The gameplay is pretty good, Otis (owlboy) cannot fight so you have to pick up your teammates for you to be able to kill any monsters. Each member does something different as they are also used to solve the puzzles that you come across. Overall a fun experience gameplay wise and I had no complaints from it as I enjoyed the combination of changing between characters on the fly to solve puzzles or to fight bosses. The game in general is not very hard, its pretty linear at times and incredibly easy but that didnt really affect my experience with the overall product as I still had a ton of fun playing for this game is more about the journey unfolding in front of you.

Owlboy is one of those games that when I look at it I will remember it for how beautiful it was, from the Title screen all the way to the end Credits, the game is a masterful art piece that will be preserved for many years to come. Check it out for yourself.

A simple platformer with fun mechanics. Story doesn't really do much for me but the environments are really pretty, albeit the repeating set pieces and lack of change sometimes makes this game feel dull. I'd def recommend it on sale, its fun to go through.

sweet, 8 hour adventure, charming and perfectly formed.
Nothing revolutionary in terms of gameplay, but it is absolutely dripping in charm, with engaging, well formed characters.

Probably the closest you'll get to a studio Ghibli 16 bit platformer

Steam only has a "yea" or "nay" option, but Owlyboy is very much a "nyea?" sort of call in the end... I guess something like a 7/10 for me? So I guess that's a recommend?
There's a lot to like in here, but there are some fundamental problems with the experience that annoyed me throughout. The game is quite pretty, and the animations are well done without feeling cumbersome or sluggish. Aurally, it's clear that a ton of work went into the soundtrack as well, and the game sounds great throughout.
But some of the gameplay decisions are tedious. Your primary means of attacking involves holding party members in the air while you flutter about, shooting enemies with the partner abilities via a sorta twin-stick-shooter-ie control scheme. It's not bad, but it does feel a bit overly convoluted when you're in a tight spot. On occasion, I'd find myself harried by enemies, struggling to press the right buttons to get the right things to happen. This is because your flight controls are pretty nuanced, and while they feel pretty good once you've gotten the hang of them, they change slightly depending on whether you're carrying a partner or not. If you're not carrying a partner, feel free to press "jump" to stop flying, but if you ARE carrying a partner, pressing "jump" will do literally nothing. It's a little thing, but these micro-deviations in control prevent flying from ever feeling totally intuitive and liberating.
Speaking of these "micro-deviations," they're kind of all over the place. When you're holding a partner aloft, your hitbox changes slightly because this action necessitates floating just a bit off of the ground. So, you need to be prepared for that minute change in elevation if you want to use a partner's weapon or ability. And if you want to shoot someone while afoot you should really learn to NOT want to do that, because you can't.
The game seems to know that these obstacles are a little tedious, and it does its best to get out of its own way (pressing the final button of a desired action will usually cut out the middle portions of the sequence that would otherwise be necessary), but the very nature of a sequence of events needing to transpire at all nevertheless induces a bit of friction in the experience.
All that being said, my main issue with the game is its take on death.
You heal in the game by picking fruit found growing in the environment and eating it, and if there wouldn't be fruit accessible anywhere in a setting (pirate ship, temple, etc.), then you're just not going to have any diegetic source of health. So that means you don't heal. And that typically means that you're going to die. But Owlboy isn't a BAD game. It knows how its been made, and it knows that you're going to die pretty frequently, and its solution is to just throw a checkpoint at the beginning of every screen, bringing you back with full health when you do die. Again, this isn't BAD... it just makes dying feel pointless, and I found that I never really felt that there were any real stakes or challenges over the course of the adventure. This over-compensation for a lack of health made the game feel like it was capable of playing itself, which left me feeling like I wasn't really contributing all that much... which is a really weird feeling to have while ostensibly PLAYING a game.
It's annoying because the game attempts to do some cool narrative things with your character "kinda-dying-but-not-really," and you see your life bar go down and whatnot in sync with the story event, and that kind of shit is really neat... but at that point I was so inured to dying that I just didn't buy it. I literally thought to myself: "Yea, but death is meaningless to Otus." And that's not the vibe they were going for (I'm pretty sure).
Narratively, they do some cool things with subtle world building, especially in a couple of mini areas that are totally skippable, and I dig all of that. I absolutely hated some character arcs (Asio is a dick who seems like he's trying to be redeemed after a certain point but did nothing to deserve redemption, and I never once stopped hating him), but I thought most characters were relatively well written for this manner of game. You don't want a ton of text for an exploratory, platformie experience like this, and while there's a bit more than the norm, the text that's there is pretty good.
In terms of exploration... for a game with a fairly large, interconnected map, I think that it could have really benefited from an in-game map to reference. There were points where I attempted to go back and explore prior areas but found myself completely incapable of actually finding them again. And in so doing, I also became afraid of being unable to find my way back to my next main objective. It's a weird issue that you don't normally see in games like this (mostly because they're usually self aware enough to give you a map).
Final thought: weird that a game made by D-Pad Studio is like the least D-Pad-ie 2D experience I've played. Normally you'd want a bit more precision for a 2D platformer (so... a D-Pad), but because you're flying around so much in this one, I typically found myself playing it more like a twin-stick shooter. Huh, go figure.

A love letter to 16-bit pixel art adventures, but sadly, a slog to play. I would give this game a neutral rating - but as I can't I won't give it a thumbs down either...
The pixel art is absolutely stunning, but the game itself is frustrating. It’s not really a platformer or not quite a Metroidvania either, and the game is pretty much linear. 99% of the time, you’re flying, yet there are a few places where you need to run and jump, but overall, it’s more like a 2D flying adventure.
The gameplay isn’t fun. Too many of the basic actions feel tedious (like eating health pickups), and many mechanics are poorly explained, or not explained at all. The game repeats the same unfun elements for way too long. Controls also feel slightly unresponsive at times, which doesn’t help either.
The “carry/teleport your buddies” mechanic is clearly meant to be a unique gameplay feature, but it just doesn’t work well, it is more or less a way to change your weapon. There’s also a ton of dialogue, and you can’t fully skip it, even if you’ve seen it before. A map would have been helpful—several places seemed worth revisiting later in the game, but without a map, I had zero motivation to do so. There’s little reason to return to past areas anyway, as enemies don’t drop currency and there’s not many treasure chests to be found.
The game lacks a proper save system, relying on autosaves instead. Some levels reset awkwardly on reload or respawn, causing issues. The gameplay is hindered by overdone effects. Characters flicker when hit, making them blend into the (beautiful) background, leading to unnecessary hits. And the excessive screen shake made my eyes hurt more than once.
Also—why is the boss battle music so ridiculously loud? And why are there no proper resolution settings / screen scaling options? On a 4K screen, it’s either a tiny window or giant LEGO-sized pixels in fullscreen mode.
Unless you’re a die-hard pixel art fan, I wouldn’t recommend this game—unless you find it at a deep discount.

This game is fine, just with some caveats especially because it is not what I expected.
Firstly, THIS IS NOT A METROIDVANIA!!!
I have to say that in all caps because, as a big big fan of vanias, I feel kind of suckered into this buying this game that was labeled as a vania. I repeat, it is not, there is no world map, there's no real reason to backtrack, the abilities you acquire are linear-based designed for a rather linear game. To that end, this is not a strictly open-world game either. There's collectibles you can go back to and access after you get your new abilities but after 9 hours I can tell you - you get very little game & story progression going back to retrieve any leftover items.
What Owlboy actually is, it's a linear story-based game with some novel designs. In that you will find yourself going back to areas you've explored before but only as it lines up with the story of the game. Which is fine, there's a fair bit of 'all is lost' moments here if that's where you like to get your feeling of tension.
For the pros, there's actually a fair bit of variety in terms of gameplay, the story and writing is decent enough, the pixel work is pretty fantastic. Although, this is also a fairly frustrating game to play cuz you'll run into your fair share of BS as your trying to get through everything. That said, all you really have to do is pay attention and you'll get by. Which, y'know, for me that would be fine if I was actually playing a game I was expecting.
Again, this is not a vania exploration 'search action' game. It's a story driven game with a fair bit of tough gameplay that you can overcome after a few attempts. I don't wanna be too harsh on Owlboy cuz it is a pretty solid game, just wanna make it clear that it is not really as labeled/advertised. As, again, I was looking for a vania cuz that's my jam, and instead I'm getting thru a flight game that I'm refusing to let defeat me before I defeat it.

Pros:
- Impressive Pixel Art
- Cinematics
- Likable Companion + Protagonist
- Combat
- Enemy Variety
- Final Boss
- Music
Mixed:
- Story Presentation
- Heavily encouraged to use a guide to get everything
Cons:
- Lack of map
- Re-exploring areas can be tedious
- Story dump in final section
- Side character stories are hidden or lacking
Overall, I liked it and the pixel art is still impressive in 2024. Lack of map really hurt the game (for me) and the ending comes at you quick since half the story is told in the last hour. Would really like a sequel/prequel to expand on the story. 8.5/10