Nearly a decade in the making, indie platformer Owlboy is finally out now. Take a look at the glorious launch trailer within...
The autumn is effectively videogame blockbuster season; the period where the likes of Call Of Duty and Battlefieldvie for our time and cash. But if you're hunting around for a bit of counter-programming to offset all the bombast, then you really ought to give the wonderful-looking Owlboya look.
If you haven't heard of it already, Owlboy is the work of Norwegian indie team D-Pad Studio, and it's a 2D platformer which uses the classics of the Super Nintendo era as its jumping off point. What Owlboy actually manages to do with its Super Mario and Kid Icarus-derived ideas, however, is quite captivating: it's also a free-roaming adventure game with puzzles and caverns like those you'd expect to find in a Zeldagame.
Then there's the pairing of its title hero, also known as Otis, and his companion, Geddy; while Otis can fly, Geddy's armed with a handy gun, and there are moments in the game where Otis can pick Geddy up and whisk him around, giving the player the ability to fly and shoot at the same time.
We have to say that Owlboyalso looks stunning: D-Pad has spent nine years developing and polishing the game, and you can see the care and attention that's gone inot those pixel graphics: the detail layered into those backgrounds and sprite animations really is quite something.
At the time of writing, Owlboyis seven hours from release on Steam, with its launch seemingly pegged for around 4pm today (that's November the 1st, if you're reading this in the future). Reviews for Owlboyhave already been universally warm, so here's hoping that the positive response means we'll see the platformer flap onto lots of other platforms as well as PC. If it does, we'll keep you posted as we hear more.
In the meantime, here's the launch trailer. Doesn't it look great?