Owlboy was in development for almost a decade, and while that often spells trouble, it seems to have been time well spent here. Dialog scrolls with comedic timing that conveys vocal tones without any actual voice acting, characters are so exquisitely animated that their emotions are never difficult to read (impressive, given how tiny the sprites are), and some of the environments even undergo day-to-night shifts – with changes in music and everything – for no reason than because it looks pretty.
#Owlboy sprite upgrade
There’s a unique exchange for every upgrade bought, and they’re all charming.Įverything in Owlboy is like that, so much more detailed than it had any functional need to be. In Owlboy, I talk to a shopkeeper with a cartoonishly phony smile plastered on her face, and suddenly a little penguin servant comes scurrying out from the back room, tripping over himself before giving an enthusiastic rundown of the item and briefly hinting at the woman’s dictatorial hold on her employees. I talk to someone, I hand them money, they hand me an item, and the transaction is concluded. In virtually any other game, when I purchase an upgrade, it’s a businesslike affair. I’m old enough to remember when videogames weren’t taken for granted, and so, it seems, does D-Pad Studio. But Owlboy carries a level of enthusiasm for this medium rarely seen in a climate where a hundred new releases pop up on Steam every week.
#Owlboy sprite full
It’s not that Owlboy could be mistaken for an actual SNES game – on the contrary, it’s so full of modern technologies that the developers coined a new term (“hi-bit”) to describe this brand of throwback. Of all the contemporary indie titles that cater to retro nostalgia, I don’t know that I’ve ever played a game that so fully recaptures the spirit of a bygone era than D-Pad Studio’s Owlboy. WTF Unlockable hats… which fall off when Otus gets hit once. HIGH The visuals, the dialog, the limitless flying… pretty much everything.
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