Owlboy

Cute game.

...

TLDR: Beautiful game that made someone who once spent a week beating the Path of Pain in Hollow Knight nearly throw the computer out the window.

Picked up on a rec from a friend. Gorgeous pixel art, and the soundtrack brought me right back to my childhood. I was even decently engaged with the story, simple as it seems. But the problems eventually got too much, and after the fifth time I rage-quit the game, I accepted that it wasn't going to work out. Especially as it became clear several of my biggest issues are core to the game's design, like...

1. The main character being a drab brown might fit his personality, but it means he blends into the background and is easily lost amidst the chaos of combat. Half the time when I died, the screen would fade out to play his little falling over animation and I'd go, "HOW THE HELL DID I GET OVER THERE?!?!"
2. The MC cannot do direct damage? Fine. You have to carry gunners, each of whom have their own abilities? Neat. You can only have them while in the air and they seem to slow you down? ERm, tactical, I guess. Taking damage despawns them, forcing you to resummon them? Makes sense, though I don't like it. Respawning them when you're on the ground just summons them next to you instead of equipped? EVEN IN BOSS FIGHTS?!?!?!
3. Taking damage also does knockback AND disables your flight. So enjoy desperately hammering on the buttons, trying to get control back of your character, so you can stay in the air, and summon your gunner (hope it's the right one and you don't accidentally switch to a different one) before your invincibility frames run out and you take even more damage.
4. Once again, your character is a drab, non-eye-catching brown. Being knocked all over the screen any time you take damage. And because it's not a set distance but just until you regain control or hit something, it's not even predictable where you end up. And oops, now you don't know where you are on the screen, so HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DODGE THE NEXT ATTACK?!?!
5. Beyond my obvious aggravation with the combat, there's also the issues of certain mechanics not being taught until it's life-or-death (riding the dragon is neat in concept, but learning to steer it while it's doing loop-de-loops and there's falling debris everywhere, all of which does damage to you, as do the walls, and you can only steer relative to your character's position as opposed to the direction anything is on screen is ridiculous) and in the last dungeon I played they went out of their way to teach multiple new mechanics only to arbitrarily rescind them (this tool gums up the bombs making the safe to handle... except in the vents, where the bombs are mysteriously immune. Also, you can use your grapple to zip past enemies unnoticed in the first few rooms, but not the next few rooms for seemingly no reason, so I just gave up on trying to zip past after a while.)

I finally quit when a boss started throwing attacks faster than I could dodge, I realized I was supposed to use the grapple to speed-dodge. But it only works as a grapple if you hold it down for a second, and I was either firing useless bullets or trying to hold, getting hit, having my gunner despawn, and now I'm trying to get my grapple-gunner back & dodge before he can hit me again... Oh, and he hit me again. I guess I was over there. Back to hammering buttons... and I'm dead. Guess I have to start this fight over.

I'm going to see if I can find any mod that makes the main character actually VISIBLE, because I don't think it's playable otherwise. Still might not be playable. The despawn+knockback combo is one of the worst feeling mechanics I've ever encountered, I hate it so much.

I'm sad owlboy isn't discussed as much anymore
Its an amazing video game, a masterpiece of art, one of the prettiest game I've played ever, with a wonderful story, great gameplay and character, beautiful music and everything please buy it

amazing

Its a great game. Lore rich. Story's fun and great. Fun to play. Not a algorithm. Potato.

While it's usually graphics in Owlboy that is talked about (it looks even better in motion), it also has enough to offer in terms of gameplay. Getting rid of platform jumping in a side scroller game is pretty original on its own, and on top of that there's a bunch of other pretty creative interactions. Each level, without trying to hard, gives you something new to play with.

How can a pretty game like this be so fucking hard....
i only say this: 6,5% of players finished the game... says everything...

I don't get the praise surrounding this game...
Of course, it is a little old by now and it shows its age. But, in my opinion, the design was already dated by the time it was released.
In a lot of ways, it reminds of Aquaria, with the bad level design, poorly developed plot and clunky mechanics
But Aquaria is a 2007 game, with a lot more excuses to have these flaws...
Owlboy is a pretty and charming game, but the actual gameplay and progression is poorly implemented. The corridor level design of dungeons, and especially the excess of dark areas, are design choices that are questionable for a game that focus on platforming. The abilities of the characters also do not integrate well with the "combat" and world transversion.
The game is easy and the only difficult areas are made so by the bad level design.

Owlboy is really nice, wholesome game that really can go as deep as you want it to. The gameplay mechanics are pretty easy to learn and simple to use with not much back and forth metroidvania play required. The story is good on the surface with some really cool background lore (if that's your thing). It took me around 6hrs i think in total to complete.

That was beautiful. A relaxing time with a good story. 100%-ing this game is very difficult so I won't attempt it but I recommend this one for sure.

Didn't age well at all. Completely linear but still somehow incredibly hard to navigate. Unnecessary shaking and flashing, both during cutscenes and fights. The places where it breaks from its boring platforming/flying to more creative things have terrible controls and huge unskippable cutscenes to make them completely intolerable.

The main character is a mute with no agency, literally getting abused from the first moment of the game without any real pushback either from the PC nor his friends. And then at some point the game gives up on real motivations and just starts signposting you to ways to stop the big bad who is collecting all the power stars or whatever, except you're not actually stopping him from collecting anything, just kinda wandering.

There's a lot of heart, but... not much else.

I could stare into this game's pixels all day...instant classic.

The pixel art alone is worth the price of admission imo. Really fun to play, a modern classic.

owl boy more like owl girl

This game is slow, boring and things just happen for no reason in the story.

There is a video of Trey Parker explaining good story telling. This game is full of X happens and then Y happens. When it should be X happens therefore Y happens. Random story beats and mechanics just exist for no real reason.

This is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time, I've been replaying it for years on the switch and other computers

i mean what can i even say about this game that could ever do it real justice? you should really just stop reading now and play it! i went in blind myself. a buddy of mine came to visit and shared his steam library with me JUST so he could sit there and watch as i started playing this game! just so he could see me begin to enjoy the true masterpiece that this game is for the first time! everything about this game is brilliant. the art style is retro yet legitimately one of the most beautiful games ive ever played. the music is fantastic! one of the few times i went out of my way to find and buy the sound track to a game ever, its that good. the writing and story are moving and funny and just oh so good, with so much emotion expressed with just text and a little bit of timing and sound effects. and the gameplay is this genius mix of platformer and twin stick shooter. i literally cant say enough good about this game!

tldr: a brilliant fusion of retro style and gorgeous art and music and a fun and moving story! seriously. just play it already!

Charming, excellent, creative, fun.

Checks all the boxes in my opinion.

This game is a visual masterpiece with fun characters and well thought out puzzles.

HOWEVER...!

The positives do not outweigh the raging frustration caused by the negatives. The controls are a mess and very counter-intuitive to the extent that the game is barely playable during fast-paced sections of the game. It's not even a question about getting used to it.

In addition, the boss battles all follow an EXTREMELY RIGID pattern which makes them very tedious and no fun at all to play through. In fact, they feel more like workㅡa chore that I have to endure before being able to press on with the rest of the game.

The game is by no means terrible, but you will indeed find yourself unnecessarily raging over the above mentioned shortcomings, often making you feel that the game just isn't enjoyable.

This 2D gem has been on my radar for a while. I'm glad to say thus far (5.2 hours in) it has been great fun on the Steam Deck. (runs naitive linux to boot!) Gameplay loop difficulty is a little lower maybe a 1/2 tiere lower than Ori and the Blind Forest but very fun.

Minor Gripe: the pickup mechanic bothers me a little as there is always items that you want to pickup and you are almost carrying someone as you depend on carrying a comrad for distance attacks.

A delighfully beautiful adventure game with an engaging storyline, amazing OST, characters full of personality, rewarding exploration and wonderfully rendered pixel-art backgrounds.

I've only played for 11 hours so far and it has to be the best game I've played for a while!
The gameplay, narrative, characters, music and especially the art are all fantastic!
It's challenging, but enjoyable at the same time, I don't feel like I've had to repeat any challenges too many times to the point where it becomes frustrating, but just enough to feel I've earned the results.
Looking forward to the rest of the game. Would definitely recommend!

I expected so much more of this game for how much was talked in reviews and videos. Yes it is beautiful, the pixel art is amazing, but the gameplay... way too slow. 1 hour into the game and still feels like I'm in the turorial room.

A very cute a quick platforming adventure that covers about two days of active playing. The characters were all very unique and the story was a lot of fun. Easily the most unique platformer I have played in a long time, which was super refreshing. I wish that there was more easter eggs or signs of the final twists for the plot before the last act, and I wanted to fight Molstrom so bad. The fact this game still holds up and can be as fun 8 years after its release says a lot about the quality and the love the devs have showed it. This overall was a nice experience that I wish lasted a little longer.

A good kind story with intresting lore and great characters. I liked the art and level disign, but there is one minus: there are not so many fast travells and about a third of the game is getting back and forward to different points at map with ways were you alredy been.
I'll rate the game with 8/10

90/100 - Amazing, I declare this masterpiece, my first metroidvania ever played. Beautiful art for landscapes and characters, good story and music (I'm not used to the 16-bit genre but they are still charming).

Incredible scenarios and graphics, fun gameplay and a loveable cast of characters. It is a game that will engage you more and more as long as you play it with its lore and character arcs, especially the protagonist.
The game teaches you well enough how to play with Otto, so the platforming sections are challenging sometimes but manageable. The three alternative offensive plays are fun and have a balance between each other forcing you to learn how to play with all three styles instead of focusing on a single character.
The bosses are also fun, although not all of them are memorable.

Really nice game. 4/5

Bite-sized, charming, touching work of art. The gameplay is fun and the music is amazing, but what keeps me coming back is the heavenly art direction. Modern pixel art at its absolute best.

So, I'm gonna give this game a soft recommend. I got it for $5.00 and that's the perfect price for this.

The Good:
+Great characters you will no doubt fall in love with
+Fantastic spritework and overall art direction
+AMAZING music
+Fun gameplay and fun boss battles

The Bad:
-Story could be fleshed out much more. There's a very, very, very unsatisfying "post-game" lore dump that doesn't really answer anything. There's even a secret message that doesn't lead to anything.
-Tiny world. You start out thinking it's going to be much bigger than it actually is and soon get disappointed.
-Despite the world being small, there is way too much backtracking and no real way around it if you wanna 100% it.

I had an enjoyable enough time with this game, but just was left with the feeling that more should have been there. Ironically, this game reminded me a lot about another indie developed Scandinavian game with a similar art style and gameplay: Iconoclasts. I would much more recommend Iconoclasts over Owlboy, but again, I don't think you'd regret playing it for $5.00.

A unique platformer with gorgeous art, Owlboy is definitely worth your time. The flight and partner mechanics are incredibly well done, with all of the partners providing a unique ability that is used thoroughly throughout the game. The coin collection system to provide upgrades to these and the player is also well thought out and implemented, with the best rewards requiring some, but not excessive, amount of extra exploration.

Overall, the combat and level design are very well thought out and work well. However, there are a couple of fights and interactions that just need a little tweaking, such as the Dirk fight, which moves at a pace that doesn't really allow the player fair time to dodge in a few instances. Otherwise though, the boss fights are incredibly well done, and provide a great balance between beatable on your first try, and requiring a small amount of learning from your failures.

Good.

There's more reading than playing. I spent the entire time playing this game either smashing B over and over so that I can actually move(dashing is the fastest way to get around) so that I can move, or smashing A over and over because the characters do not stop talking ever. My hand hurts from the nonstop button mashing. There are endless useless cut scenes that show you basically nothing and the action stops so that the characters can recap what you were just told less than 30 seconds ago. Literally. It's just not fun to play. if there was more actually playing the game, and less play time padding I would can this game but it's really more of an interactive book.

Alright I've given it enough time. This game is more frustrating than it is fun. The controls just ruin the entire experience. The art is beautiful, and that's one of the only things it has going for it.

If you're considering buying this game but on the fence, save your money and go buy a better game.

Owlboy feels like it was created by ambitious artists. The art in this game is fantastic, and it's clear lots of work has gone into making the game look good. On the flip side, the gameplay/combat feels quite janky and times. It doesn't make this game bad by any means, just that it feels weird at times and takes some time to get used to the controls. I played on controller and the combination of aiming and autolock was quite jarring at times. The pacing feels a bit off and it often felt like there should have been more lore established for what happens later on in the game. It definitely feels like this is the product of ambition and years of development, cuts, and changes. The art in Owlboy, both visually, musically, and in terms of the deeper parts of its story, is excellent. Owlboy has some beautiful, beautiful moments, especially toward the end. I had an alright time in this game and I'm happy that it exists. It's not perfect gameplay-wise, but there's a lot of fun to be found in the beauty of Owlboy.

Oooh. Pretty pixel art.

2/5
This game is visually stunning, every building, every shrub, ever cloud is detailed and unique. Every level has its own color scheme with some unique character designs. But goddamn the gameplay is a total mess. The abilities feel so strange, needing to pick up a person to use a weapon/ability just does not work well. Your gun shoots below center too, which makes it incredibly uncomfortable when 3+ enemies are thrown at you in close quarters, especially since owlboy himself can't kill anything and needs the gun. This off-center shooting mechanic also makes certain bosses have huge difficulty spikes out of nowhere. To make it even weirder, you also have no quest helper and no map. Which would be fine if the level design was linear and/or exploration was rewarding, but you get nothing from exploring but looping back to the start of the level, and some of the level design is very confusing with many dead-ends. Figuring out which direction to go from the main area is way too confusing and time consuming, every time the game put me back to Owlboy's home I would spam dodge back over the entire area for 10 minutes trying to figure out which path to take. Its not always obvious and I'm not sure why no direction was given when there is no map.
The levels feel disorganized and some puzzles are confusing in such frustrating ways. There is a puzzle next to a plant at a deadend. Unbeknownst to me, above the plant is a secret entrance which would be revealed if I grabbed and removed a few stones. But the "pickup" tooltip only showed up if I dropped my gun/companion, so I didn't see the entrance nor the blocks to pick up on my initial flyby. My dumbass flew back through most of the level thinking I missed a path or different way, maybe a button or something to put in the plant. As soon as I saw the plant was interactive i thought something needed to be done to it. Why put an entrance there, like what was the purpose of hiding the main path next to a plant I can interact with, other than to be a nuisance? Another bad puzzle is on one of the first levels, where you have to grab a cloud to make it rain so you can fill up a jar. This is the first time ever being shown a cloud, with 0 explanation, just after being tasked with using a bomb for the first time. So I'm thinking I need to bring the bomb over to open the jar up. Stupidest 5 minutes I've wasted in my life, and thats how a lot of the puzzles are in this game. What would be a simple 30 second puzzle if the mechanics had been explained or shown beforehand, instead becomes 5 minutes of fucking up the puzzle before understanding what needs to happen and feeling like an idiot for taking so long to realize. Most of them feel like gotcha moments, or something so easy a 3 year old could figure it out, I really did not like this game's puzzles.

I'm probably about halfway through the game and the jungle just absolutely ruined it for me. Out of nowhere the difficulty spiked way up and I'm suddenly dying multiple times between puzzles, only because I can't see the mobs flying at me at mach speed. Its not even a difficulty spike, its punishment, I can't see them and I'm not about to memorize their movements to pass this 1 level, so I'm just spamming roll through them until I make it. They made it even better by putting the checkpoint 4 areas back so every time the invisible enemy kills you, you have to redo the 2 child-level puzzles before the hard part. Then whenever I made it past the dark area after 5-10 deaths, I was met with 0 instruction on which path take or what to do next, but I was given 3 pathways. So now I get to explore each one, probably die a couple of times and reload to the last checkpoint before figuring out which way to go. I should be punished because I messed up my timing on a boss, not because my gun doesn't line up straight and I can't see the enemies around me, because I'm not given any direction where to go or what to do. This game is so incredibly frustrating, I really did not enjoy playing it, it looked great though.

7/10

very pretty and lots of fun. i was invested in the plot and all the lore.

i just wish there was a map. i also found the combat was a little clunky, but that could just be my poor hands :(

The game has beautiful graphics, awesome characters and great music.
The story is okay, but not great and the controls can feel clunky in certain areas. This might be ME problem, but near the end of the game there is a section where you are in space, and you have to jump on these floating platforms. What you have to do is jump on these small platforms and get off them fast enough before they get destroyed and, for some reason, I was having so much trouble trying to jump and glide myself to the next platform. It should have taken me like 5 minutes, but it took me waaaaay longer. I died like 20 times. Every time I tried to jump and glide, my character wouldn't jump when I wanted to, or I would jump and try to glide and undershoot my gliding jump. It might be my Xbox controller, but holy crap, it took me longer to finish that jumping area than fighting the boss (which took me like 2 tries).

Over all, I give it a 6/10.

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

The Cave Story -like presentation is nice, and I like owls, but the invisible walls and a lack of a map are too frustrating, sorry.

interesting little game

I'm glad that I dug this out of my backlog. It was fun, short, and sweet. It has interesting characters and a good story. The music is perfect.

This game is a hoot!

Played the game years ago, no good memories of it, 0/10

I don't CARE if it "looks stupid" >:( I'm gonna wear the funny green hat

This is a very story centered game and it does that pretty well, albeit some odd choices. The art is beautiful and the music is great too, but there is just something about the gameplay that feels missing. I find myself just trying to play to get to the rest of the story and not really enjoying myself along the way. Couldn't manage to finish it even.

It feels like a game made by artists who game, not gamers who do art. Not a dig at either, just not my thing. 5.5/10

Great fun

A wonderful game with a lot of heart!

Beautiful looking game and great story. The fighting is really not one of the games strong suites, but it knows it and plays more into the movement (which I enjoyed a lot) and the story.
For all the completionists out there: The achievements are kind of a pain, especially the minigame, where the controlls are lackluster at best. They still don't take all that long and you just play the game most of the time.