Odallus: the Dark Call

Nostalgia or "homage" driven game design is an interesting and oft-times frustrating way of building games for the end user. I've often thought about what defines the niche, and from there, whether or not I'm complaining about something most of the niche enjoys or if it's just something they piled into the game because they could.

Odallus: the Dark Call wears its retro styling in big bright pixels on its sleeve. The game resembles a visually superior Castlevania 2. Yes, that Castlevania. The one you're not supposed to mention. Look at that sentence and look at the paragraph above, and you can start to wonder what I was worried about when I picked this up in a bundle a couple weeks back.

But there's a lot of mechanics in Castlevania 2 that could be good or bad, right? Just as there's lots of mechanics in Sonic, or Shadow of the Beast, or the whole potential variety of retro gaming to draw from, including a lot of games I honestly can't remember even though I've probably played most of them.

And draw from it does, in fact. Odallus feels like a mish-mash of themes and homages jumbled together, all drawn in with an almost Berserk like overtone and pixel graphics with a sweet "television" filter that makes it look super retro in a way pixels along rarely convey fully.

The result? Well, let's see...


As I said, Odallus is a pixel graphics game, generally hovering back to the 8-bit era with a couple amiga touches. Actually, I guess I'd put it around master system level, but it has a color palette very strictly referential to the NES. As pixel art goes it goes between serviceable and at some points actually quite visually attractive, especially in using the somber mood and as I said an almost berserk - that is, stylized gothic horror - look. I really dig the Aqueducts level's visuals. You can tell by the screenshots the game doesn't shy from variety, though.

The game does a bit better in managing to use a NES style presentation of a somewhat interesting story. It's nothing mind-blowing, but the little bits of dialogue and stuff are amusing. It kinda loses the thread in the midway of the game, since the game isn't exactly linear.

There's this funny moment as you're playing this game, which feels very Castlevania slash Shadow of the Beast and maybe some other stuff beside, where you're back-tracking around and thinking this is sort of a metroidvania, and then you remember the "vania" in metroidvania is Castlevania and why am I surprised by this at all? But yes, there's a lot of back-tracking and exploration and various upgrades that open up access to secrets and so forth. Heck, there's even sort of a missiles system, where your bag stores more special weapons as you get along further.

Level design is really mixed in Odallus, and much of it feels like they're just wasting your time. Levels are big by 8-bit standards, with lots of hidden passageways and jumping puzzles. Some of it is really cool, but a lot of it just starts to drag as you do the same tedious assortment of agility tests over and over. The first couple times you do a trick, it's neat, but as you go it just starts to feel samey. Levels will have elevators to skip over parts, and it's just like ... Why didn't you just make another level? Why do you need to add more complexity, just put another dot on the map? Yeesh.

Also, the game implies levels have "secret exits", except they don't - you have to clear all the bosses to unlock the final stage.

Monster design starts in Odallus really, really strongly. A lot of the earliest enemies feel very precisely like they won't hurt you if you understand how to fight them, and it turns into a question of doing those fights well. You feel good about this, but later on, it starts to get kinda shakey and some of the enemies are just awful. There's this weird... I don't even want to describe the visuals, but it is invincible from behind and while shielding, so it takes way too long to kill. Like I said, this game likes to waste your time. The boss fights are often not checkpointed properly, more time wasting in the name of "difficulty", but the actual fights are certainly interesting in their way. It actually ends up having more of a Metroid vibe, with usage of the movement upgrades dominating how to react and fight them.

The currency system in Odallus is basically: Enemies drop money, money buys consumables, the end. There's no other loot, besides said consumables coming from chests. Also chests often drop money. There are upgrades of the usual sort that expand your movement and the like. Very metroidvania. The usual suspects I love the way the float cloak looks in action, it kinda resonates with the theme of the game in a beautiful way.

Movement mechanics are probably Odallus at its best. You can ledge-grab, and then later gain upgrades that expand out how pixel perfect the jumping is. I don't know how to articulate the difference, but doing difficult jumping puzzles felt more like having a plan in mind and less like fighting with the controller to do something simple. 

Odallus isn't perfect, but half its flaws come off as built from what it is homaging and the other half seem like limitations of a side scroller. The biggest problem I have with the game is how enemies interact with exploration and back tracking. If you're pro-active, most enemies are fair on the first pass, but if they respawn on the way back they're often in odd spots then you start piling on chip damage until you're nearly dead and flop over when you're exploring. The fact all enemies in the game have touch damage is frustrating as well. Spikey crazy looking monster that hurts upon touching? Fine. Guy with a crossbow? It just feels tedious.

I'm not entirely certain what the rules to respawning are in the game, either. It feels like sometimes they don't respawn, and other times, they're back if their spawn point leaves the screen. There's an enemy type that respawns and ploughs touch damage right into you if you happen to jump up and scroll the screen. It's pretty bad.

The game's audio direction is good, very nostalgic, but the music is kind of a mixed bag. I like some of the tracks a lot, but some of them are pretty weak or irritating. Which is also a kind of nostalgic, but not in the way you want it to.

The game uses checkpoints and a lives system, and frankly, I don't really see the point. It's more or less a book keeping situation - as long as you remember to buy lives at the vendor, you're usually fine - and just comes off as pointless. You punish the player for either really struggling or not paying enough attention, neither of which comes off as difficulty types "skill" players get off on. Honestly, about half way through the game I was starting to think about putting it down, as it begins to get a little tedious. You want to keep going to see the various boss fights and the like, but the game likes to "mix it up" by doing something utterly boring, like yet another tunnel filled with spikes and the like.

Like, no joke, don't play this game while playing Sonic games. It's basically Labyrinth zone from Sonic 1. Spikes, weird monsters, lava, block pushing puzzles, it's all here.

There's a couple points in the game where it doesn't feel like it telegraphs what you're supposed to be doing properly at all. I don't like looking up walkthroughs, but you're going to find this game needs it, unless you like wandering around like an idiot for hours. Stuff like, you know, a gear requiring multiple sword hits to activate? And only until you hear a specific sound. This is some bad game design. You just assume oh, I hit the one, there must be more. You wander around. You look up a walkthrough, and man, you are disappointed.

I got through most of the game and, as I said, after a while I was really considering putting it down. It just starts to get kinda dull, trying to avoid chip damage while going through some more spikes or some more lava. The game isn't so much missing polish as having an intentional design that makes it very hard to recommend. If you're into speed running or want to play a mix of hack'n'slash and very fair torture platformer, I think this game suits that desire very well. It's rarely actually "NES hard", there's not much bullshit, but it's also just kinda boring in parts.

If you're wondering specifically why I quit playing, I just didn't feel up to grinding through the plethora of enemies in the final level. It just stopped being fun.