NES Throwback Alwa's Awakenin

My experience with the NES is rather limited, having started gaming on the SNES and only played the NES titles my friend happened to have. The Metroidvania style of side-scroller is not something I was ever really familiar with on a fundamental level, though I have played a few. I guess for those who are unaware, a Metroidvania game is usually a description given to a side-scroller title with a vast and open world you can explore, find secrets throughout, and doesn't just advance stage by stage. There is likely a more cohesive definition out there, but this should suffice.

I went into Alwa's Awakening having little to no idea of what to expect, and I come out quite pleased with what I saw. As I said, I can't really judge it by comparing it to the contemporaries it is trying to call back too, but on its own merits the game looks and plays great. The developers, Elden Pixels, manage to avoid a trap many indie devs fall into, and that is prioritizing making the game look retro instead of making it look good. Palette swaps certainly exist, but you end up seeing a good variety of enemies throughout the game, and a variety of environments scattered across the world. Over a hundred rooms exist in the game, for the purpose of this a 'room' is one screen, and for the most part, they are all distinct. You'll come across rooms that do seem like mildly altered versions of other rooms from time to time, but there only seemed to be a few I noticed.

Traversing the world is also a lot of fun, your options expanding as you advance. To start you have only your weapon and the ability to jump. As time goes on you gain access to a spell that creates a green block you can push, but only one at a time. You can use it to reach higher places, farther places, it will only fall off edges once pushed all the way meaning you can use it to sort of artificially extend the walkway. Throw in a floating bubble you can create in order to go even higher, a lightning bolt spell, and an upgrade to the first two? For a small indie game, you have a lot of fun options for digging around the world in search of your goals.

Outside of a handful of things you actually have to have, you can collect orbs that will weaken enemy bosses based on how many you have. Each 'orb level' you make it to knocks one hit point off the boss, which is equal to one hit from your weapon or lightning bolt. No boss takes a ridiculous amount of hits to beat, so this is quite helpful. I ended the game taking off four hit points from the bosses, which was enough to make a difference, but not enough to make the fights a cake walk.

On the topic of bosses, they are all pretty great. There are a total of five you need to defeat in order to clear the main story, and I know of one optional dungeon that may or may not have one, I never cleared it. The bosses got progressively harder up until the last one, which was probably the easiest of the five. The bosses are all about figuring out their patterns and some quick reactions.

There is one aspect of the gameplay that could turn people off, and that's what I'm going to dub 'The Death Halls'. This comes up more in the last stretch of the game, and they are stretches of three to four rooms where everything in each room is a one-shot death of you screw up. It's a decent stretch where you can't make one mistake, and if you do you go back to the save point. Now in these cases the save point is right at the beginning of the death hall, so at the very least you're not going to lose any real progress. Now I don't mind these stretches of the game myself, even if I think they show up a little too often in the last dungeon. While you can't really afford to make a mistake, they aren't very long despite being three too four rooms, and you can see everything in each room coming in advance, so you're not going to be caught off by something you can't see coming. Having to re-do the same areas you already did can get a bit frustrating, but again this really depends on your own personal tastes. It's not much of the game regardless.

You'll notice I haven't really talked much about the story. And while the game does have some secrets and Easter eggs to discover, there really isn't much of a story. Sticking true to the era it comes from, the story is simple and straightforward. There really isn't much world building, and pretty much no distinguishable character traits among the very few characters you come across. You're a hero pulled from another world to save the world by defeating a decade's old evil, you collect the artifacts and slay the beast.

Overall it's a great little indie game. It doesn't really do anything new, but it does it all very well and has enough of a spin on itself. They made great use of the retro style, some fun and challenging areas that require a good amount of thought to progress through, and some great visuals along the way. Definitely worth checking out.