From the video:
I got a chance to play Oirbo, an atmospheric 2D platformer from Imagination Overflow games. They sent me a steam key out of the blue, which is awesome, and I spent a couple of hours hopping and bopping around the early access version. So my impressions and the clips you see here that aren’t from the trailer don’t necessarily represent the final product when it launches. Oirbo’s an action platformer that has you exploring a large, mysterious spacecraft with distinct sections and plenty of secrets to unravel.
I played it on a 3080 and it looked beautiful and crisp in 4K, but it could be run on much less. It’s another Metroidvania, which is great for some, but if you’ve seen some of my stuff you may know I’m not personally a fan of backtracking and trying to figure out if something is really difficult or if it’s actually impossible until later in the game.
But in Oirbo I thought it was pretty clear if something was off limits until I needed like a dash or a double jump. The game goes for an eerie, mysterious tone with atmospheric music and a more subdued pace. The ship is teeming with activity and even life, but it’s curiously devoid of humans, at least in this section of the game I saw. There are references to Earth, so the spaceship originated there, but what exactly is going on now is the puzzle to solve.
I think the game wants you to explore and experiment in a thoughtful way. And one of its defining features is the complete lack of text in the game. Everything’s communicated visually through icons or simple animations. Sometimes the icons are confusing at first until you get a lay of the land and start to put two and two together.
There are some aha moments early on and along with the beautifully crafted hand-drawn artwork, there’s a lot of potential in this title and for the first half hour or so I was eager to figure this thing out, unlock the dash button, and get to the next section.
But that’s when things started to unravel for me.
The controls are very, very simple. Like the days of yore, you start out with two abilities. You can walk and you can jump, and that’s it. Now you can unlock a dash and a double jump and who knows what else later on in the game, but to start out that’s all you have to work with. You can jump on enemies’ heads Super Mario-style, and doing so will give you a health pill. You can also jump on enemies to get extra height or distance in your jump and be prepared to do that a lot. And I mean a lot. The levels are clearly designed to be challenging, but honestly, I found them more frustrating than challenging.
When you die, you can respawn right there until your health circles run out entirely and then you’re sent back to your most recent Save and depending on how much you did since the previous save, this can mean a lot of backtracking on top of what a metroidvania like this already requires.
The in-air controls are a little stiff, but I can see in the change logs that these have been updated recently so I’m not sure if they used to be more floaty or more stiff. But for me, changing direction in mid-air felt a little unnatural, and without the momentum I’ve come to expect in other games. This meant a lot of overcorrecting or undershooting or just generally feeling like where I was going to land was unpredictable. Maybe I just suck! This game definitely made me feel like I did.
So when you combine the lack of text, retreading the same areas over and over, the slower, more thoughtful pacing, and some struggles with the controls, I was no longer exploring and being challenged–I was retreading and being frustrated. Even the first boss fight was frustrating because the hit boxes were suspect and the fight itself came down to just jumping on his head and hoping he didn’t lift his arms up. There was no indication or flash or anything to warn you, so it sort of felt random. It was at that point I decided I didn’t have the heart to go on.
I think there’s a lot of potential in this game, and it’s probably a great game for the platformer die hards that want a new challenge. For me as a more casual gamer, it just felt a bit too punishing. I’d like to see more of the world and learn more about the story, but I think it’s just a bit out of my reach.
I’ve only played the game a couple of hours at this point, I haven’t made it very far. These are just my early impressions. I did get pretty frustrated with it and I think I explained the issues that I’ve had, but I am excited to see what’s going to happen over the next six months to a year and how this game may change.
I do think there’s a lot of potential here, but yeah, my early impressions were just it’s it’s frustrating. It is very challenging and I just think I’m not quite ready to bite that off yet, but I am going to follow it. I am going to be excited to see how this thing develops. I played the game in late July 2023 and the developers have stated they plan to be in early access mode for 6 to 12 months, so expect a full release sometime in the first half of 2024 on Steam Epic, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.
For more reviews, previews, and impressions, be sure to check out my channel. And thanks for watching!
