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Severed Review

When Severed was first announced back in 2016 critics and fans gave the game’s developers (Drinkbox Studios) a questioning look. ‘Why?’ they asked, ‘why release a game in 2016 exclusively on the PS Vita?’. ‘Well’ Drinkbox said. ‘Because Vita owners buy games on the system’.

Nearly a year and a half later and the landscape is a little different. The Nintendo Switch is a platform where its owners are buying games hand-over-fist. There is no question why indie developers should bring their games to the system. And even though I platinumed Severed on the Vita, I was more than happy to go back and revisit this beautiful and unique game.

The Story

In what can only be described as Drinkbox’s version of the ‘upside-down’ from Stranger Things, you play as Sasha. Sasha wakes up in this strangely familiar, but eerily corrupted world missing her right arm and her family. A dark figure tells her there is still a chance to find them, if she acts quickly. With a sharp sword and her mother’s training, Sasha sets out to save her family and find her missing arm. Along the way she will have to defeat monsters, sever their limbs and use them to make herself stronger. Plus solve puzzles and manage the local crazy lady to try and save her family from an evil dragon.

The Game

What’s unique and refreshing about Severed is that it is a touched base game and can be only played in handheld mode (because you need the touch screen). The game is a first person dungeon crawler with some metroidvania aspects. As you progress through the game, Sasha unlocks different items from defeated bosses that open up new paths. The metroidvania aspects are much stronger if you want to 100% the game, as there is a lot of back tracking to do. However, if you just want to experience the story, these new items will be more important in combat.

Combat is the most interesting part of the game. Each battle enters a screen where Sasha is surrounded by enemies. To attack, the player needs to swipe left and right on the screen, which simulates a sword swing in the game. Swipes can be large or small and made at any angle. Successful hits fill up a ‘focus meter’ that lets Sasha sever limbs from the monsters she defeats.

However, Sasha can only face one monster at a time. Each enemy has its own unique pattern that the player needs to learn to defeat it. The patterns include both attacking and blocking. So when you attack, there will be parts of the enemy that will block your attack. If an enemy blocks you, it ends your attack combo and slows the speed of which your ‘focus meter’ fills. In addition, enemies will attack you! At the bottom of the battle screen is each enemies’ timer, which tells the player when they will attack. However, you can be surrounded by enemies. So it’s important you keep and eye on this timer to block attacks from behind and to the side of you!

Monsters’ attacks can be blocked with counter swipes. So for example, an enemy may attack you with a swipe that is right to left. To block, you would have to perfectly time a swipe that is left to right and parry the enemy. Therefore, the player has to balance attacking the enemy, filling up your ‘focus meter’ and blocking enemy attacks.

When your focus meter is full and you have depleted an enemies health, time will slow down and you can sever that enemies’ limbs. Lines will appear on the enemy where you need to swipe to sever. A timer runs so you have to be fast to get all you need! These limbs can then be used as resources to upgrade Sasha’s combat skills.

The main hook of Severed’s combat is learning the enemies’ attack puzzles and getting your timing perfect. Towards the end of the game you feel like a God! Switching between enemies, attacking, blocking and severing their limbs; it’s so fun! For me the touch screen worked perfectly, I never felt like a swipe was missed. Using it also was very refreshingly and because Severed was designed specifically for touch screen, it fits perfectly on the Switch! Even more so than the Vita because the Switch’s screen is bigger.

Art and Music

If you like the art of Guacamelee then you will love the art of Severed. Though the world is a ‘dark world’ there is so much colour and flair there. I thought the design of Sasha was exceptionally cool. Especially when you gain all of her items and armour! The monsters too look unique. The harder the game got there was unique models for the monsters, even if their attack patterns stayed the same.

The music on the other hand was ok but a little repetitive. There is one track in the cellar of Sasha’s house that is great (with the pianos) but I mostly found myself getting bored of the music in the game.

Problems

Honestly there wasn’t that many. I’ve already played the game so knew what to expect and as I said above, the touch screen worked exactly how it should have.

There was one bug I noticed in the game. There is a section where you open a gate and it will spawn enemies 5 times. It rewards you with lots of limbs and is sort of like a grind section before the last boss, to make sure all of Sasha’s upgrades are unlocked for the player. Through the spawning sequence, the game first (somehow) sent me back to the last check point and then the second time crashed. The third time was the charm though, and I managed to get all the goodies I wanted. This was the only problem I had with the game.

Summary

Severed is a fantastic game and is a must buy on both Switch and the Vita. Its combat is complexed but fun to play. The art style is fantastic and the touch-screen mechanic was refreshing for me.

That’s why I give Severed by Drinkbox Studios my rating of 

Severed, Review, indie game, Nintendo Switch, 8, drinkbox studios, Guacamelee, indie games,

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Owlboy Review

Over the last few years there hasn’t been many games that have got me to boot-up my old gaming PC. I’m predominately a console gamer (and now solely a Switch gamer) and like playing my games on the comfort of my sofa. However, when Owlboy from D-Pad studios was released back in 2016 with raving reviews, I spent my Christmas break back in England trying to play through the game. Unfortunately, I never managed to finish the game because of a corrupted save file, but I always knew one day I would go back and finish this chirpy little game. Flash forward a year and a half and Owlboy is on sale with 20% off on the Nintendo Switch. Finally, finally I get to beat Owlboy…. but is that a good thing?

The Story

You play as Otus, a mute Owl who is in the middle of his guardian training. In Otus’s floating island village of Vellie, Owls are protecters. They are highly trained to defend their village from the marauding Sky Pirates that lurk around in the open air. However, because he is a mute, Otus is seen as the but of every joke and is treated horribly by his master.

On a routine task, Otus and his companion Geddy are investigating a mischievous stranger in the village. As they follow the stranger, the pair stumbles across a hidden ancient Owl Temple. Upon entering the temple, the two friends find an ancient device that lets Otus teleport Geddy to his position (which is very convienient for puzzles).

After making it to the main vault of the ruin, Otus and Geddy realise that the mischievous stranger is working for the evil Sky Pirates. The Pirates’ plan is to steal one of the Owls’ ancient relics. After an intense battle the pirates are defeat, causing one of them to join your team!

The three companions set off on an adventure to stop the pirate Captain Molstrom from finding the Owls’ remaining two relics. Nevertheless, a deeper plot unravels as the story progresses. It is not just the Pirates Otus has to worry about.

The story in Owlboy was a little confusing, as what seemingly starts off as being a typical ‘save the world from the bad guy’ story soon becomes tangled in overly complex subplots and lore. I could see that some parts of the story were there as lore to build D-Pad Studios’s universe. And I also think a lot of the random story was there to lay the foundations for the next game. However, when mixed together it made for a choppy and overly long story which by the end, I didn’t enjoy.

On the other hand, what I really liked was how D-Pad Studios developed their main characters in the game and really gave them clear and concise motivations for wanting to help save the world and stop the pirates. Otus for example, is always seen as a fool or worthless by his peers and therefore has a point to prove. Geddy is loyal and wants to be their for his friend Otus, whilst also protecting his friends and family in Vellie. Alphonse the Pirate’s sense of dignity and pride has him fight for the good side instead of the bad. The final character (who I won’t say because it’s a spoiler) is an outcast from his family and was betrayed by the pirates, forcing him to side with Otus. I thought it was great how fleshed out each of the main characters were in the story, which is not always seen in other indie games.

The Game

The game is a 2D side-scrolling platform puzzler with some very light metroidvania elements. Otus can fly, run, roll and spin but he cannot use a weapon. Therefore, each of your companions has a specific weapon which only they can use. Otus has to fly around and carry that character to use their weapon. The game is a twin-stick shooter with the left joystick controlling Otus and the right aiming his companions’ weapon.

So for example, Geddy has a basic pee-shooter type gun and Alphonse has a shotgun which is very slow to reload. It can also be used as a torch and a means to burn the environment to open up new areas. Furthermore, he is very heavy so Otus moves slower, but it also means Alphonse can be used to hold down bigger pressure plates, which help solve puzzles. The third character has a grappling hook which helps Otus platform through tough winds and warp through enemy attacks.

In addition, Owlboy also has a significant amount of boss battles that the player must overcome. I liked the visual design of every boss but the actual mechanics behind the battles were pretty standard. They reminded me of some of the ‘bullet-hell’ bosses from The Binding of Isaac but were much easier to understand and beat.

I enjoyed the twin-stick aspect of the game but the combat really took a rear-seat compared to the puzzles in the game. Each puzzle was well designed, fun and made you think. Many had that aspect where the solution was simple. Nevertheless, they made me over think so much that I was trying to do Rayman-Like equations in my head, only to realise all I needed to do was look bit harder or try something a slightly different way. I find this aspect great because it always shows how well designed a game’s puzzles are and how bad at puzzles I am!

As I said above the Metroidvania aspects of the games are very light. For players that wish to just play through the story, there is no real need to back track. The only collectables in the game are coins and a few special tokens which don’t have that much of an effect on gameplay. The coins can upgrade Otus’s health, but I would argue they are mostly there as distractions for players.

Art and Music

Anyone who knows anything about indie games can tell you Owlboy is famous because of its art style. It’s pixelated graphics are stunning, there’s no two words about it. The animation is always flawless and the art direction in the game’s world is beautiful. Each environment is varied, rich and colourful.

The music too is up there with some of the best. Orchestral sounds swoop and swoon as Otus flies around Vellie, with slower more melancholic tones at the sadder parts of the game. The sound design too it fantastic. I love Otus’s whistles of approval and the evil laugh of Captain Molstrom. Put it all together and I have no problem saying that Owlboy is the best presented indie game on the Nintendo Switch. However, because of its immaculate presentation I feel some things may get overlooked by reviewers.

Problems

Firstly the game crashed on me four or five times. Again like The Adventure Pals, it was always close to the end of the game when it happened. One boss battle in particular (the metal snake) was so framey it was almost unplayable. I was mostly guessing where the snake might be and shooting, hoping my bullets would hit and end my framey nightmare.

As I said above, the combat was lacklustre and too easy. The only challenge came when you were up against multiple enemies. However, what tended to happen was that you would get pin-balled between enemies and killed. So when you get hit once, you may as well reload your game. This made combat always feel like a chore, which was very disappointing.

Finally, my biggest issue was that the jump and glide function were both mapped to the same button. Throughout most of the game this was fine. However, close to the end there is a platforming section where you have to masterfully time your jumps and glides. This literally took me 45 minutes to beat because the controls weren’t tight enough. There was times when I’d want to glide but instead I’d jump (and vice versa). I really wish there was an option to change the control scheme in the game!

Summary

To conclude, the excitement I had for Owlboy was definitely over exaggerated. Though the game’s art and music are a masterpiece, its choppy story and somewhat boring combat make it a little bit of a drag to play. There are some definite highlights such as the puzzles and depth of the four main characters, however, for its quite expensive price of $24.99, I feel there are a selection of simply better indie games you should play first. Maybe do what I did and wait for it to go on sale before picking it up.

That’s why I give Owlboy by D-Pad studios my rating of 

What did you think of my review? Did you love Owlboy and think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s have a conversation over on Twitter or join the Switch Indie Fix Discord Server.