TL; DR: a very great game for those of you who prefer to sit back and enjoy a good story

(minor spoilers)

in today’s modern age of massive multiplayer MOBA games and 100 player battle royal games it seems that the glory days of single player games has long past, it’s sad that the very games we grew up playing are no longer considered good by many inside the industry, before the internet all we had were the amazing stories that came from the hard work and dedication developers put into their games.

as time went on games became less and less original as players demanded sequels to their favorite games, developers started re hashing old stories to make them seem new, and most games tried their best to shoehorn in a multiplayer mode. the beauty of videogames, the story, was left to the sidelines.

that is why I’m very glad to see many smaller developers commit to the single player stories that made this medium of entertainment what it is, and Owlboy is a great addition to that medium.

in Owlboy you play as Otus a young, mute owl who is put under the tutelage of a well-respected mentor named Asio. at the start of the game you see parts of Outs' training and consecutive failings. his inability to learn the fundamentals of being and owl, even his inability to fly like the rest of the owl children. this game tries its best to tell you that Otus is a complete failure, you would be inclined to think that the game is selling Otus short however as the story progresses you start to see that no matter what Otus does, he always seems to fail at it. from patrolling the town looking for pirates, only to have the pirates attack while he is being distracted.

as the game progresses you get the feeling that while Otus is making great strides through the story, he isn’t really making any improvements, he's not learning anything new. But from what he lacks in his learnings he makes up for in the friends he makes along the journey. the story seems to be telling more the groups adventure as opposed to just Otus. since he is mute all the narration is done through second parties. while you may be the one controlling Otus it is his friends that are telling the story.

and what a story that is!


highlights:

-great story: as told through the second parties. while Otus does not talk or make any major improvements I still felt accomplished and (somewhat) satisfied with the ending.

-great soundtrack: the music and ambiance are both smooth and fitting for each environment, it never feels like the music is overpowering the mood.

-great art style, its pixel art, what's not to love? in my opinion you don’t need realistic or fancy graphics you just need a good art style

-amazing characters: a lot of single player games nowadays I talk to a person only once unless I absolutely must, however the characters and their stories had me checking in on them whenever I was able to just to learn more about the world I was in which leads me to...

- the lore: arguably one of the hardest parts of telling a story is finding a setting and building a world around the story. it’s easy to go from start to finish, but only truly great works take time to care about the before, the after, and the stops you make along the way. this game takes its time between the bosses to shed some light about the world and why you are undergoing the quest that you are on.

the only issue I had with the game was the ending. not in a sense that it was bad but that it kept things very vague, I can understand completely from a story telling standpoint why the developer did this, but I was left with many questions that were left unanswered chief among which was, what happened sir fish after the story ended?

9/10- I hate giving perfect scores
in all honesty though at $25 this game is worth every penny, if you ever see it on sale I would highly recommend getting this.