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Faithfully feels like a game from the 90s | Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard - First Impressions

2K View2022-12-24

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is an old-school point & click adventure game reminiscent of the classic animated movies of the 90s as well as classic video games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam and Max, and Kings Quest.

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is an exciting re-peek into the glory days of point and click adventure games, and for better or worse, without holding back anything in terms of puzzle solving gameplay, pixel art, and playful storytelling. Well, except for the "Modern" game mode — opposite of Classic mode — where items are more visible and puzzles are easier to solve in general.

Set in the small kingdom of Velehill where our character, a young deer named Fine finds himself in the middle of a mysterious series of occurrences. Missing animals, destroyed houses, and dark shadows roaming through the forests.

The story of Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is lighthearted, with most of the bulk of the narrative that I’ve experienced so far being centered on the cartoonish interactions between various anthropomorphic animals, complete with hand-drawn cinematic cutscenes and a charming dialogue with occasional choices. There is no combat, as the game is laser focused on puzzles and exploration.

Investigative exploration and going through nook and cranny is highly encouraged and emphasized. In addition to the overarching world map where you can choose to travel in different locations, you are often given multiple paths to go to within those locations (mainly the four cardinal directions) and you can interact with the environment many different ways using many different objects you come across in the world.

The puzzle difficulty of the 90s games have been mostly retained. On many occasions, the game uses cheap visual tricks to obscure an otherwise obvious solution, exacerbated by the limiting retro pixel art and puzzle oriented gameplay, it can be annoying and frustrating at times. This is where Modern game mode comes in, if you wanted a more automated experience and just want to focus on its narrative and charm.

So far, Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard faithfully feels like a game from the 90s and If you are someone who loved these kinds of point and click adventure games and wants a gameplay experience like that again with a fresh new story, this game is worth a try.

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