AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected

I just started this on PC hence the low game time. I've completed it 100% on Switch a couple of times and love the game. It's simple, cute, and super fun. It was made almost entirely by one guy. No one should be hating on this thing. It's awesome. It is oozing with care and attention to detail.

I wasn't going to post this review because the game already has mixed ratings, but then I learn that there was a permanently missable item if you choose the "wrong" dialogue option with the frog in the first 10 seconds of the game.

Incredibly underrated game, yes it's simple but the gameplay loop is flawless!
Earthbound mood meets first person dungeoneering is an interesting mix that feels weird at first but ramps up pretty fast and in the end works really well!
My only nitpick is that the game feels very barren for the first hour or so but after that it's smooth sailing.
Pick this up, though!

This doesn't feel a game that is finished with any polish, this feels like a slightly improved game jam project or capstone project. It has charming characters and music but game-play isn't great. the extremely low health means you lose to the many enemies in the room you accidentally walked into since the 2d in 3d world makes it impossible to gauge hurt box distance. Past the basic moment and attack nothing is explained so so thing are happening, journal updated, etc without knowing how to access any of that. Level design is a padding to game length since your running in circles trying to figure out where the hell your going. Its a game that could have been interesting but actually playing it isn't fun.

This game was played on an Anbernic Win600 Handheld 😊

[Short Review]
A Short and Flawed yet Cute and somewhat entertaining Game. Too bad it slightly falls short of a recommendation.

[Long Review]
I wanted to recommend this game. At the beginning I was enjoying myself, however during the late game and Achievement Hunting this games cracks started to show. In the beginning this game was kinda fun I enjoyed going through Procedurally Generated dungeons in First Person killing charmingly animated enemies with only a stick it was interesting. However it was the repetition that worn me down. The Combat wasn't good but serviceable it was hard to tell the distance between you and the enemy. This made it hard to avoid damage in some cases. I admit there was a Dot that changes color when near an Attackable or Interactible Object however it was too small and wasn't enough to determine distance. The Procedural Generation wasn't varied enough creating stages that were exactly the same as other runs. The Stage Design combined with the Procedural Generation wasn't engaging enough to keep the gameplay interesting. The Game lacked enough Enemy Variety to keep the gameplay engaging and challenging boiling down to samey boring gameplay on repeated playthroughs. The Boss variety was also not very good with about Three different Boss encounters in all. The Story wasn't great or In-depth which would be fine, but the Characters lacked the Personality and Characterisation to carry it or match the Art-Style. More Character Dialogue sequences and Interactions would have went a long way towards fleshing out these characters. Lastly the Support Characters are pretty OP. I guess this was an over compensation for your character being a kid with a stick. There could have been more strategy implemented in the combat to keep it interesting. Overall Away was a charming game with a charming Art-Style but the constant replaying of levels for Unlockables and Achievements dragged the gameplay down. I honestly hope these Game Developers try again. This game was very unique with a charming Art-Style.

{Achievement Rating}
Easy yet Tedious 😕

I'm recommending this because I have no real reason not to, but it's pretty unmemorable.

It's not a great game, nor is it terrible. It's just simple and repetitive. The characters and story have no real depth, and the gameplay is bland, although the graphics are pretty nice.

It's probably better for children or inexperienced gamers than others (in the time I played, I saw no offensive content), and I bought it on a pretty heavy sale, which may repeat in the future.

I beat the game. Took longer than it should've because I was looping back to the start many times and didn't know where to go.
I'm not a big fan of looping games. It's a little bit lazy in terms of game design.

This game is gorgeous to look at and the combat is fun. Level designs are random and can be kind of fun. But the looping and short length of the game make it a no buy.

Only get this if you're really attracted to the look and awant to spend some time in an anime style world like this. For that it's not bad. 4/10

I'd recommend this game to anyone who is new to gaming.

Pros:
Cute aesthetic
Simple controls
Fun dialogue
Unique characters
Somehow made me feel nostalgic
Dying is rewarded with permanent upgrades so it feels less punishing to start over

Cons:
Short , 4-7 hours to complete
Low replayability once 100% completed with the story
It could provide a bit more assistance getting the first few friends unlocked for newer players.

Impression:
This is a fun little game that I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys platformers or is new to gaming in general. Definitely buy this game when it goes on sale.

I really wanted to like this game. It's clear the developers are very creative and imaginative! However, the combat just sucks. Enemies can peel away at your health from behind or glitch into you without warning. Multiple times, enemies just straight up glitched through the floors while I was trying to fight them. Also, the filters over the friends' vision made them a lot harder to use to the point that they felt like a power down in some regards.

TL;DR Great design and concept spoiled by frustrating mechanics.

While I really wanted to enjoy this game, I find it hard to. Despite less than an hour of playing I can say, without a doubt, that the combat and environments drag this game down hard.
The art style is the biggest positive this game had; all of the characters are expressive, well drawn and lovely to look at, and the music is decent to boot. However, the environments were bland, with even the randomly generated caves feeling like bloat and just being a bore, and the main character has an incredibly short ranged melee attack only that was unfun to use, making combat something to avoid. Almost any other character was better to play as, which you can only do for a certain amount of attacks, making me want to avoid combat even more. This game was really dragged down by the poor combat system and environments, the only thing worth getting it for would be the art, which you can just watch a video for.

I wanna like it, but not at the price tag. The art assets are great and I think with a lot more time in the oven and a greater focus on plot or expansion of abilities would have helped this greatly. For 16ish USD its tough to recommend but its ok for around 5 bucks. I hope the developers keeps on trying to make new games. Plenty of potential at least.

Recommended: on Sale

It's not overly long, and a large part of the game relies on you re-treading what IS there.
However, what IS there is charming. The music is great, the aesthetic is wonderful, and it feels like a fun little action platformer from days of old.

It feels like an utterly fantastic student game, or perhaps a really low budget game made by industry veterans. On sale, I'd say it's worth picking up.

The Positives: Music, Theming, the attention to detail like every character having their own vision type, the beautiful animation, and the decent boss fights.

The Negatives: Sound bugs: Many SFX are not properly tied to the SFX volume slider. As such, they are max volume at all times. Unfortunately, these are also all of the loudest/worst SFX that this could happen to: Exploding lightbulbs, breaking cameras, and robot death, to name a couple. "GO" from the space knights appears to have this issue, and there's more besides.

Also negative, the very basic hit system. Basically there is a half second window where you can hit the enemy, but they can't hit you. This is pretty annoying, and until you figure it out it's not very obvious why you are taking damage. You have to get close to hit them, but then you get hurt every time. You have to figure out there's this tiny zone where you can hit and they can't, and manage all enemies in that zone.

And last negative: Really pretty short. What's there is polished, particularly visually, really well. But the intro animation, aesthetic, and honestly standard price point really leads you to think there's going to be more game for your game. The dev's claim 5 hours-ish, I beat it in 2.8 and I did a whole extra run to grab a money achievement. And that was 5 runs.

The fact that the new areas don't have their own dedicated dungeons is a let down, it's a weird idea that you'd unlock a new area only for it to lead to... the same dungeon. And that all 4 areas use the same mechanics, hit 3 switches. This is the student-game feeling.

Overall, still very charming and well made. When your biggest complaint is you want more, that's definitely not the worst sign!

This is really a fun game to play.
The graphics are super gorgeous and I love all the different characters.

The gameplay mechanics are not ideal, but they can be looked past thanks to the charm of the game.

Fps roguelite (barony, delver, city of brass etc) with the cutest, charmingest, most amazingest graphic I've ever seen. It's so charming it can rot your teeth off. The gameplay is simple but solid, and the gimmick you recruit party member as your "weapon" but you also change into their pov when you change into them, for example someone might only see in monochrome, or someone have broken glasses ruining their pov. The length seems to be short and sweet, which is the kind of game I like nowadays anyway, but some people might prefer it discounted.

This game is a lot better than most reviews say when it comes to game-play, it's priced a little high for it's length and replay value however, but it is definitely worth buying when it's on sale.

I really enjoyed this game. I enjoyed the art style, the soundtrack and the difficult is challenging enough it will keep me engaged till I complete the game. I don't get to play many games, but this was one I could put on for an hour or so while the kids watched. They enjoyed it too.

If your in for something fun, interesting and different your will really like this.

At one point I even caught myself comparing favourably to the old days of Doom and Duke Nukem. Mostly because the game felt new and interesting, Something that we don't often feel after playing games for 25 years now.

Much enjoyable.

I truly wanted to give this game a positive review when I first saw and bought AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected, I really do. But sadly, I can't due to the lack of content for such a price. :(

There isn't that much dungeons, allies, bosses, and areas to explore, thus making the game-play quite weak. What makes it even weaker are the keys you get for certain areas which instantaneously unlocks the boss areas ( e.g. Labiworks ) via levelling up. If you happen to be a skilled player, then chances are that it's impossible to die even once in this game. (unless you want to die on purpose for the two achievements given to the game itself)

If I had my say on how to make the game-play truly worth my time, make new areas to explore before facing the final area which has the notorious Space Knights , new dungeons to fight through (big and small), brand new allies to recruit for your adventures, and new bosses to fight against.

I've been looking forward to Away for a while now, after first seeing the game at PAX a year or two ago. And I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in ages.

The game is short. It's a total of about 3 hours. At this point I've done more or less everything there is to do, and have all but 2 achievements. Each of the four areas in the game has about 3 different enemies, and of those, there are really only 3 enemies with different behaviors. Finally, the bosses. There are 3 of them total. That's it. There is a final boss. You can beat him by just spam clicking the mouse and not even moving. He challenges you to a game of Ping Pong that is one of the biggest jokes as far as boss fights go that I've ever seen.

I wanted to love this game. It has an incredible atmosphere in some ways, but right now, it feels unfinished. It's short, the "gameplay" is unsatisfying, and you will spend a majority of your time either waiting for enemies to come toward you and hit them with a stick, or just ignoring them, and completely skipping the fight, because you don't have to fight them.

When I played a demo at PAX, I thought I was playing say, I thought I was seeing an opening level of an unfinished game. Well, it turns out I was seeing about about 25% of the games content, and it hasn't changed much since then. Finally, the game is pretty buggy. I clipped through the floor a few times, and there's nothing to do but just reset if that happens.

My hope is that the developers take all of the experience they have from this, and make another game that capitalizes on their art and animation, and has better gameplay, a gameplay loop that isn't "rougelike" circa 2014, and tells a story that is at least slightly interesting. As it is, the game doesn't even meet what I would call Saturday morning cartoon level of plot.

Earthbound this is not. Doom this is not. Do not buy it. There are some good ideas here, but they're terribly executed, and it's simply not fun to play.

About 2 years ago I wrote a small review of the game. Back then I couldn't recommend AWAY. Let me explain for a bit...
When I saw the first trailers, it looked and sounded really nice. It reminded me of the old Wonderboy games on Megadrive and Master System.
But it was sadly barely playable. There was an insane amount of mouse smoothing and absolutely no FOV slider. You probably could change that by fiddling about in one of the .ini files but nowadays you shouldn't have to do that yourself. And stuff like disabling mouth smoothing/acceleration and FOV sliders should be a given!
There were also some shady business by the devs, devs locking negative posts in the Steam forums and apparently deleting others too...I honestly don't know if it's still like that now...
All of this made me ask for a refund. I waited for some big updates and a discount.

But finally the devs adressed my main two problems, there is now a FOV slider (going up to 90, which is alright for me but some people would prefer more, I can understand). Same goes for mouse smoothing, you can even change sensitivity (which I think you couldn't before), it's not perfect though I wish you could turn that up a notch but that definitely alright now.

So after all that I can say the game is fine, I haven't played all that much so far but it works as intended. You can now safely refer to GmanLives review!

I wish steam had a "It's okay" not just a binary yes or no answer, I only give this a yes because it's right up my alley, I can't get enough of games with this kind of charm to it. However, until it gets more updates or something, it's just not $16.99 nice. If you can pick this up for about $5 I say absolutely go for it because it isn't a bad game in the slightest, but you'll complete this game in under 4 hours.

I like it, I like the charm and personality it has, I like the wholesome writing the game has, I love the art style, I like the music, I like the environments. Ultimately, I think my biggest issue with the game is that there isn't more of it. It felt like it was over just as it was beginning.

That being said, The combat could do with a bit of a tuneup as well, as like, I see what they were going for, which is quick Zelda-like whacks, but the rest of the game doesn't have enough meat on it's bones for the charm (which IS there), to carry it alone at the price they're asking for.

You can exploit pretty much every enemy in the game by circling around them or rhythmically whacking as soon as they get close enough while standing still. If there was just a bit more variety that kept you on your toes other than the mole enemies that you can only damage when they come out from the ground, then it'd probably be a better combat system. But even the mole enemies you can exploit with a charge attack. The game is pretty much just too easy. There's nothing wrong with easy games, but the rest of the game does not have the depth or longevity to match the kind of games it pays homage to.

Also, they didn't translate from controller to Keyboard & Mouse very well, as there's a mouse lag in the game and you cannot turn it off at the time I write this review. Also, the menus are keyboard controlled instead of mouse controlled. Some people really don't like this, and in any other game it'd be a death sentence for it's controls, but it never became such an issue that I couldn't get used to it since this isn't a twitch shooter where precision matters.

All in all, I give this a slightly cautious recommendation. Like, again, it's not at all a bad game in the slightest, it just lacks length and certain key things that would take it from good to great.

Picked this game up on PSN to pass around with my kids. I played for about 3 hours on my first playthrough. That time is what this review is based on. Although, I did play for about 20 minutes here on Steam so I could make sure everything was the same. I plan on keeping it here on Steam, even though I'll most likely be playing it on the PS4. It's worth a double purchase. So yeah, the review.

Away is a pretty simple game with a simple gameplay loop. Make friends, get gold and bombs, then kill stuff till you either die, or get to the end, level up and gain access to new areas and abilities, repeat. That's it.

But, that's not it, completely. Because it's the stuff that fills in the cracks that make Away such a fun time.

The movement is just plain fun. It's fast, responsive and the game will play out as fast, or as slow as you want it to depending on how good you are with movement/combat. Honestly, this game screams speed running, if you're into that.

The audio reminds me of Spyro a bit, as does the general tone, although that may just be because of my own mental wiring.

Graphically, the game is beautiful. From the anime opening that is reminiscent of Studio-Ghibli-lite mixed with some of the anime found on early Cartoon Network blocks, to the Dragon Warrior-esk enemies. This thing feels like a love letter to classical anime design. The visuals are eye-candy, and the intro can be left on repeat for a bit before it even starts to get tiring.

Then there's the story. It's not Shakespeare, but it doesn't try to be. It's a lighthearted story about a boy that's trying to figure out who busted a hole in the wall of his grandparents home. Along the way he meets characters that know a little more (or sometimes a little less) than you about the situation at hand, and another narrative that's threaded in too. You befriend some of the characters, and this allows you to play as them in a sense (more on this in a second). It never gets very deep (although I haven't beaten the final boss yet), but there's a kernel to chew on once you get past some of the initial arcs. There's also some side-characters that have their own stories that all work to add a sense of character and depth to the world.

The friends you meet along the way is probably the mechanic most worth talking about. While playing you pick up Friendship Cubes. These allow you to open up larger conversation chains with different characters you meet. If you pick the right options, or meet a certain goal, they'll join you on your quest. From then on you can switch between the main character and his friends. All of the friends have different quirks and attacks. From a fireball tossing wizard, to a friend that tosses something near and dear to them on the ground (no spoilers). These friends don't work off of your heart/health system, but their own energy gauge. If they get hit, the gauge goes down. If they attack, their gauge goes down. There are certain exceptions to this, but generally you need to look at them like abilities that you can use that run on a limited basis. Because once the energy is depleted, the friend/ability is gone till your next run. Choosing when to use them is a pretty fun part of the game, as it has you deciding between risking hearts and fighting with a stick, risking running out of energy and being locked out of a good ability later when you may need it more, or tossing grenades (fireworks in this game), a resource that doesn't regenerate naturally, but you can find them in chests, as drops, or at the store. To add to this, once you unlock a good selection of friends you also have the choice of what ones are you going to add to your group to effectively build your character with. On first glance, it seems shallow, but as you play the game and feel the choices and options for yourself I think you'll come to appreciate it.

All in all, this game is well worth the asking price for what it is. A feel-good action game with a short gameplay loop and tons of charm. It's something parents can enjoy with their kids, or by their selves to get that feeling of other feel-good action games of the past (such as Spyro or some of the Rare N64 action games).

Pick it up and give it a chance if this review sounds good to you. I think you'll have a fun time.

When I first saw the reveal trailer, I thought, "WOW. This is a game I'm really going to be digging--i mean, look at that ART THO."

Alas, here we are.

Make no mistake, though it may have seem like I booted AWAY up and wrote a review straight away, I bought the switch version several days before the PC version launched because I was just so excited, and this is what I want to say:

I really wanted to like this game. It's visually stunning, but the combat--which is pretty much the entire game--leaves something to be desired. None of your hits feel like they have much of an impact on enemies. You're basically waiting for enemies to get close enough (until your reticle turns red) to hit them, but it doesn't feel satisfying. It just never does, which is a shame because the characters are environment are so charming.

AWAY certainly handles better on PC than on the Switch because I feel this was just built for mouse-and-keyboard, but let me just say, the performance on the Nintendo Switch is just piss poor. You'll be hard pressed to aim at anything in that version with your thumb sticks. While this game is certainly smoother on PC, there's this frustrating mouse-smoothing that can't be turned off. While aesthetically pleasing, I wish it were a toggle rather than a default feature.

Ultimately, AWAY is just...okay. Dungeons are randomized and so are enemies, but you *are* just doing the same thing over and over again which, though characteristic of the rouge-like genre, is simply frustrating here.

This game seems to have been streaming since launch, and is still streaming as I write this review. It's the same locations over and over again. While the charm is there at first, I can only imagine much of it wearing off very soon... A game needs a lot more than that to keep players engaged.

The art style is absolutely adorable. Controls are straightforward and easy to understand. The game play is a little repetitive, though. Combat is a little bit more difficult than anticipated, leading to a lot of running the same section of the game over and over again(I'm watching the developer stream right now, and they are doing the same thing over and over and over again). All together, not a bad game. I'm enjoying it thus far.