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Owlsgard! A modern approach to the classic 90's genre!

2K View2022-12-24

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard (Reviewed)

Developer: WatchDaToast

Publisher: WatchDaToast

Released: Dec 23rd, 2022

Price: $24 USD

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is a throwback classic point & click adventure. Follow Finn, a young deer, as he arrives back home only to be met with his house in a dilapidated state. He notices his parents are missing, along with strange footprints leading outside the forest. What could have happened here?

Solve puzzles, interact, gain knowledge to help him and his friends figure it out.

Feels like a genuine 1990's experience

Synopsis

The game takes you to the kingdom of Velehill as Roebuck Finn is returning home from his adventures. He is horrified to find that his home has been destroyed and his parents have gone missing. He quickly starts to realize that things are not what they seem, finding out that more animals have been going missing as of lately, even in the larger and deeper parts of the forest.

As you investigate, you discover that machines have invaded the land and are threatening to destroy your world. With the help of your companions and your undeniable wit you embark on a journey to Owlsgard and beyond to uncover an ancient mystery and save your world from the machines.

The graphics are very pleasant

The charm of early 1990's games was more about the story and the focus on silly effects, wacky characters and personalities with a lot of cheesy jokes.

In the hands of talented artists and developers these games were capable of being made, because these companies really cared about what they were doing. The employees also recognized how special their jobs were and so worked to make the most of it with what little space and resources they had.

The feelings that this game conveys is very genuine to the time and era that it is trying to replicate. The visuals are wonderful, the designs are gorgeous and while trying to be old-school, it still feels like it was made in the modern era.

The game is fully voiced by a cast of talented voice actors

While some of the voices seem to just be the same person making a slight alteration to their pitch, they for the most part fit the characters design and personality. It doesn't get annoying but there is the option to disable voices effectively turning it into a text based adventure for those who prefer it.

Pet peeve with the type of problems these games tend to have

A few of the puzzles while great can be frustrating on "Classic" mode

The problem with Sierra / Lucas arts games is with the way they were made. They didn't want their games to be too easy or too ridiculously hard for their players, but they still wanted the game to eat up as much of your time as possible so you wouldn't be beating them in a few hours rather than a few days or weeks. Since most people didn't have access to the internet, this was the norm.

This game also falls into the realm of obscurity and unfun puzzle designs at times when the solution is literally right in front of your face for hours.

I am not saying this game is bad, but rather frustrating when you need to solve a puzzle that is so blatantly obvious, but the visuals you see on screen do not immediately lead you to the solution for the puzzle, until you finally click on it.

Example:

You're pressing a button, but that button has another button that is shaded / indented in a way that makes it look like a part of the design and not a button. So you run around trying to solve the puzzle until you find your way back to this location and frustratingly finally end up clicking it, which solves the solution!

While this type of puzzle solving may have been rewarding in the early 90s, most gamers do not like this, myself included. It's exhausting and isn't even a puzzle. It's more or less a way to confuse people into wasting hours of time.

I didn't actually find the "Classic" mode all that difficult, just a bit tedious at times. This can obviously be more of a personal bias than an actual problem.

The game is much more forgiving on "Modern" mode

This basically grants you a more automated approach to the game.

Puzzles will become way more obvious, flashing key aspects that should be investigated, etc. While still being fun to play with less mental work involved.

Only one major issue

There do seem to be a few errors in translation

The game itself is made by a German indie developer, so the game is more or less focused on being in German. The game has the option to choose between German or English, but sometimes German text replaces the English text.

This is especially troublesome if you do not speak German, and the text being displayed is explaining important puzzle details for you to progress the game.

While I did have friends who could translate, I do wish these things would have been fleshed out before the games were released with an English QA team.

The game has a constant auto save

But, make sure to manually save often

You will find yourself in many dangerous situations that can lead to the hero's death. While the game does auto save at times, you can also manually save at any point in the game, as many times as you want just to be on the safe side.

You should do this before doing anything you deem to be dangerous unless you fancy doing a lot of the content you just did all over again from the start.

Would you recommend this game?

If you're not much of a puzzle and story player you should pass on this game

There isn't any combat, the game is more of a novel at times followed by minutes and sometimes hours of puzzle solving with repeating actions.

The story is good, the characters are nice and the puzzles, while sometimes irritating and exhausting, feel okay enough to be moderate but not hard.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt

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