This instance for me was a first from Keymailer. What I’d done was go through my entire Steam Wishlist (Over 2k Games, it’s a story for another time) and requested EVERY KEY that I could for all the games on my wishlist. This took mostly the entire night until 4am in the morning, provided that I’d also watched my friend’s stream until midnight that night, and was also being distracted by everything and anything. Lo and behold, I get not one but two games from the same dev, both being the same franchise and being from as early as 2017.
Alwa’s Awakening is the first of two games, the other being Alwa’s Legacy, which I am yet to play and review, and should promptly be doing it this week. From looks only and the trailer, it looks to be a nostalgic revisit to the old 8-bit platformers coming out nearer the end of the 8-bit era, graphics and movement promising to be an absolute gem and reprise many people’s memories. I was met with this, but also met with the other thing that happens when I go back and play old games. “Hmm, something’s not right. Something just feels a little off, like something is missing. It has everything I knew it would have, but why don’t I enjoy it?” But this isn’t an old game? It’s not something I played in my childhood, yet it comes with that anticipated nostalgia haze, with the emptiness ensuing.
You are this fabled character that’s supposed to save this village/town/city of Alwa. I read the plot and one part said city, but the image was literally like 10 houses, and it threw me off, I think. You go through a mass dungeon crawl where there are enemies everywhere, destructible objects and permanent powerups that unlock more sections of the map for you to explore and conquer. It gives exactly what’s promised and delivers exactly what’s expected, but why do I feel so let down?
Well, I think after going back to the game after the stream and literally meditating on it, which you’ll never get me to do for anything else, I’ve put my finger on it. Most of which are things that other games do, but I think the overall combination of these things are what brings it down to a boring, grindy, flavourless halt. So from here, instead of doing the pros first, here come the cons.
Cons:
Most of the platforming requires pixel perfect jumping. I found the platforming some of the easiest to control out of all the games I’ve received from Keymailer, but it takes the happiness of finally having that away from me when showing me the platforms. Granted, not all the jumps are hazardous, death traps, but the ones that are the furthest away from the checkpoint always are, and it hurt my soul.
Speaking of checkpoints, Red Cap Zombie Hunter, eat your heart out because you have NOTHING on the placement of these checkpoints when it comes to distance. The overall arrangement of the checkpoints is actually acceptable, and is not as chaotic as the haphazard tornado light show by Red Cap. However, the distance is actually heartbreaking and forced me to recline in my chair on multiple occasions.
So if it wasn’t for the amount of dying I was doing sending me back, I also have to do A LOT of backtracking as well. I know it was very common in most older platformers, but with everything combined I genuinely felt as if I was losing the will to live, passing the same area so many times with nothing to gain from it. I only found out that there were quicker ways of going around things, like hidden walls/doors/ceilings/floors, yet I wasn’t to know as they looked the same as everything else!
As if backtracking and losing progress on things wasn’t enough, your character is also very slow in comparison to big empty and expanding rooms. With not much filling them but maybe one or two measly enemies which will be super stingy about their drops.
I could probably think of more, but I honestly think that’s enough to rag on the game to make you have a second-hand experience of what happened. I have hope for playing its successor as it too also has a good amount of positive reviews. I’m hoping the next game will have expanded on these Pros I now have to list to keep the review balanced.
Pros:
The game works. 💖
The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.
The music fits the purpose. It’s chiptune and 8-bit, and most soundtracks fit the appropriate setting they are put in. Boss battle areas seem to lack a little, but most of the others are great.
There are NPCs all over the map that all have some sort of dialogue (whether relevant or not) which really brings a bit more life to the otherwise empty feeling game.
The powers learned by the protagonist within the game (specifically the first one where you summon cubes) were generally surprising to me and a lot more refreshing than the generic powerups most games would give you to get around obstacles.
Not all enemies are the same one. There are different enemies and also different variations of the same enemies that take more hits to kill. That and the bosses are interesting and, while not spectacular or grandiose, were still a nice bunch of pixels.
This is honestly a review that I did not want to do. When I look at this game from afar when not having played it, I see what I want. An enjoyable look back on a previous era of gaming, brought back into the modern day, but when played it brings back all the same problems that early day gaming had with it. While £6.99 is a great price for a game with 5 – 10 hours of playtime it’s honestly, mostly filler, retracing your steps, taking the wrong route that leads to nowhere, being punished and not liking it.
Zesty Rating 4 Out Of 10
A great-looking and sounding game, but that’s about it. Has everything about a game from the 1980s including all the unintuitive and punishing game design. Nostalgia-vision encapsulated, leaves you tired, sapped of your enjoyment because it’s not as good as you remember it being, despite never having played it before.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
NOTE: There will be a few spoilers in this review. Not major spoilers, but more to do with the core functioning of the game and not to do with the story. Mentions: EXP, LV (LOVE), Training Dummy, Nature of the game’s “life lessons”, all gameplay routes, that some characters die (but not specified which do), and a brief explanation of the first 5 – 15 minutes of the story.
Undertale is a debated masterpiece by tobyfox, spanning a fandom which has been thriving for years (7 to be generally correct) which still, to this day, sparks the creative fires of its fans.
The last time I played this game was years ago, getting through the game on a pacifist run and getting really fucking stuck on the dummy level. At that point, I didn’t appreciate the music as I was too busy getting super aggravated at the bloody cheating dummy. If I went back to it now, I’m not certain how well I would fare. I’d possibly do better or there is the possibility I’d do worse, as over the years my style of gaming has changed considerably. (From being a COD and Halo player to Skyrim, Oblivion and Indie games).
Undertale is one of those games that tries to teach you life lessons, but has trouble deciding which life lesson to teach you, as there are so many relevant ones. But also, you are changing all the time as well, and what you consider to be the best decision may not be the same as what you once thought. It’s not the most groundbreaking game in terms of “I did a wonderful thing, why did things turn to shit?”, no, no, that award goes to the first 15 minutes of The Captain and a few other games I’ve forgotten.
You can play Undertale one of three ways, kill everything in sight (Genocide), kill every minor enemy in sight and spare every major enemy that has a personality (Neutral), or reason with everything and kill nothing (Pacifist).
What the game does, is set you up.
It gives you the basics of the game. Kill things, and it gives you XP, when you level up, you increase your HP. The point that this game makes however is that it never told you to do those things, and further on you can discover that killing people and the creatures you come across is bad (believe it or not). How bad? Well, if you go on the Genocide Route, one of the main characters reveals to you that EXP is an acronym for “Execution Points”, a commentary on how you’ve mercilessly slaughtered everyone. Okay, that’s pretty bad, but when you get enough EXP you increase your LV, which is short for LOVE, that can’t be bad, right? Nah, bro, you still fucked up. “LOVE, too, is an acronym.” Apparently standing for “Level Of Violence”, you’re executing of all the innocent creatures and people, levelling up just how much of a violent threat you are.
The neutral path isn’t that much to speak of, characters make remarks about your killing of the minor enemies of the world (which are classed as their citizens, no matter how ugly they are or if they attack you). The major characters will not really be pleased with these actions and will make some, but not all, friendly interactions unavailable, especially with the lawful good-type character.
The pacifist route is probably as you would expect, and while I do love grinding for EXP and advancing my levels, knowing that I can be friends with everyone instead is just so heart-warming. There are honestly a few minor characters that have my heart, one in particular is apparently always made fun of for its appearance, and is crying in its sprite (not the drink, the character sprite). You can console it and tell it that it’s good-looking, and the fight will stop because you’ve cheered it up! Just getting your first little “Awh…” moment is always great. Especially when coming to the big bosses as well, you will feel compelled to fight as each of the bosses (which is basically every main character) throws everything at you. You almost feel like turning around, saying “This bitch…” and using ye olde Attack button. Dodging every attack and appealing to their humour or trying to calm them down. Rinsing and repeating this a good few times can have you on their good side, and if you’re lucky, you could get a date with someone really great.
The story, as spoiler-free as I can put it, goes as so. You are a human child who, one day, when frolicking in the land humans occupy, fell into a deep, deep hole, onto a very convenient bed of flowers. Your character, who is called Frisk, apparently, wanders around until she runs into a very nice lady. The thing about this lady is that she’s a monster (but she looks super cute though, so she passes), she nurtures Frisk and looks after them until your character starts wanting to leave. The very pleasant monster lady, Toriel, panics and informs Frisk that they can’t leave. The only way to get back to the human world, above, is to go through the land of monsters, and they will try to kill any human they see.
Of course, the story can’t progress if you just stay, so you push on. Toriel isn’t having any of it, and this becomes your first battle. I’m sure she says something like “I can’t let you leave as they’ll kill you…” and makes reference to her doing it herself, so it’s less painful?? I’m not certain, I have a weird memory of that happening. After you decide whether your child character kills the very nice Toriel or not, you’re out into the land of monsters. From here you meet plenty of other monsters, minor characters, random chance enemies and major characters. Your main objective being “Escape”, but it’s so leisurely as while the monsters are struggling to survive underground… it’s such a beautiful and unique place. You find out how the world of the monsters works and the lengths they go to pursue and catch you, their hopes and dreams, and their ambitions and morals. They see you as a morally evil being due to the stories that were told about humans and their traumatic history with humans. No wonder they’re hell-bent on killing or capturing you.
Make friends or enemies along the way, discover horrible truths about monsters in general and about others more specifically. Even the practise dummy that you were told to hit by Toriel has beef with you, and it’s super pissed. But the end of this game is not the end, as, debatably, the best feature of this game is in its replayability.
From what I could tell, this game does not encourage you to replay the game, but it has a strange tone about you from the start, almost speaking to you like an old friend. But upon restarting the game, it’s immediately made known to you that the game knows you’ve restarted the game and will make commentary on your actions within the last run. Whether you killed everyone, killed no one or didn’t finish the game, it’s onto you. It turns out that you’re still playing the game, the choices that you’ve made impact your next play too. Though this is a “new” playthrough with a “new” Frisk, it’s hinted at that this is the same Frisk. Time rewinds and Frisk has full recollection of what happened in the previous game, whereas only a few of the monsters do, the rest of them are reset and have no memory of what happened. Even dying if you killed them the first time around. I’m sure at one point, a character you killed in the game before said something about dying in a dream when you start a new run. One of said characters directly calls you out on this with it’s always snarky tone, and one alludes to knowing, and depending on the route you take, will reveal to you how much they know.
This game is an expertly crafted machine.
However, the dark side of this game does not really come from within the game itself. People can find this game unappealing if it’s not the type of game for them, they may find the game ugly, or uninteresting, which are all perfectly valid. (But how can you not enjoy the music? I listen to this on repeat unironically.)
The real problem with this game is the toxic fandom. Real, great things come out of the fandom, going on from being completionists to lore hunters and theorists. Branching off that into discussing alternate universe versions of the characters and shipping other characters and art and… I could go on. Fandoms are wonderful. But one thing that this fandom is the absolute worst for is toxic backseat-gaming.
We will look at the case of Markiplier (yes this is the second time I’ve mentioned him in my reviews, I used to be a gigantic fan, leave me alone) and his Undertale experience. Not the video itself, but the mass number of comments in his videos relating to the toxic fandom attacking him over his choices in the game.
Markiplier, of his own volition, heard about the popularity of Undertale and decided to see what the fuss was about. What he was about to learn is that the overwhelmingly positive feedback of the game had led to overwhelmingly expectant fanatics of the game.
“Undertale is just oozing with charm, so get ready for an adventure! Moreover, my friends would not shut up about it, so I had to see the game for myself!”
Alas, he made the mistake of recording it and putting it on YouTube.
He managed to get a few playthroughs into the game before his choices enraged the overly expectant section of the fandom. Bear in mind, like in all cases, political, cultural, religious, fandom-based, the majority are usually never the “problem” when it comes to issues “created” by said group. Instead, it is usually those who shout loudest, the vocal majority that are usually the issue (as typically, the true majority of these groups want to be left to enjoy their shit in peace.) The vocal majority of the Undertale fandom is comparable to the stereotype of ‘feminism’ used to denigrate it, or the many “Karens” used to justify why your cousin’s newborn daughter shouldn’t be called that. So, when people mention the “Undertale Fandom”, they immediately think about the vocal majority, instead of the true majority.
“Everyone was disappointed in the way I was playing it, and ordinarily I would just be like: ‘Y’know, I’m doing it my way. I’m gonna do this,’”
Markiplier only got two videos into Undertale before the pressure of the wave of toxic fans of the game had completely overrun his comment section. A combined total of almost an hour of video, and Mark reading out all the dialogue to make it entertaining, had meant he’d not reached the first town yet. Which, on a solo playthrough without an audience to entertain, would take a lot shorter of a time. Mark did not get to really even experience the game, as something he’d done within the game, had made the toxic fandom so mad they had to harass him.
He gave a fan-favourite character… a “redneck voice”. Oh, the humanity! How dare he give a character which has no voice, a voice that is the wrong voice! How is it the wrong voice? It just is!
Oh, and he’s doing the genocide route instead of being a pacifist and completely missing all the friendships that he could’ve made, and that’s not how the story is supposed to be canonically… Wrong! You HAVE to play it pacifist first so that you can feel the PAIN of killing everyone and tugging at your heartstrings, oh my goodness, it’s just so wrong.
There are more threatening comments than this. This one was the more “on the fence one” before it got nasty.
The wave initially overflowed his chat with a wave of insults towards the voice and the fact that he was killing things because it’s not the way that they believe the game was intended to be played. There were then people trying to “reason with Mark” by pointing out why he should do the pacifist run instead. These explanations were overly detailed and spoiled a lot of the game for him.
“I’m not having fun making these videos because I know that no matter what I do, everyone will think I’m wrong.”
“I feel like I missed out on [Undertale] because people ruined it for me… Even though this game is wonderful, I feel like I missed out on it because people tried to control it too hard. And that’s a lesson to learn about something that you care for very deeply. Allow other people to experience it in the way that it should be because that’s what the game is about. That’s a lesson to learn for both the community that facilitates around Undertale and life in general in anything that’s not Undertale. Let it have room, to breathe…trust the people that you care about to find their own way, and make their own mistakes, and discover new things you may have never seen. It’s about trust, you know?”
~Markiplier at the second attempt of playing through it on a livestream.
It wasn’t only Mark who was affected by this onslaught of negativity, it had hit the entire side of YouTube that was playing the game the way they wanted to. People who had newly started the game, knew nothing of what they were “supposed to do” and were going into it blindly, as you should with games. Attacks were being felt on all fronts. And you can tell how bad a fandom is when it garners the response of the creator.
There is more than this from TobyFox on the whole “bad fandom” thing, but I could only find the one where people were spoiling the game. Which is bad enough in itself, but not as bad as harassment.
I won’t go on for much longer about the fandom, as it’s honestly not something that’s wrong with the game itself. It’s actually a sign as to how, when something is so good, that it brings together everyone to be so passionate about the game. It’s just unfortunate that they turn into mindless drones of “You’re wrong, this is the right way to do it.” Tobyfox was probably one of the people who were most affected by it, seeing their creation as an instrument used to excuse why people are turning so sour against people who are only trying to enjoy the game.
At one point, I’m confident that TobyFox even reached out, on Twitter, to condemn this behaviour. If not, there was something said, as I remember the massive uproar from both sides of the community.
However… In conclusion, this game is a subjective masterpiece. Not everyone will like the game, and not everyone will like certain parts of the game, be it pacifist or genocide. But this game, single-handedly, made such a significant dent that the impact of it will be felt until the next considerable upset. A game with a core that powerful that it drove people to be toxic (who were probably already just as vain/toxic and needed something to latch onto) to passionate levels and seek those who were in the wrong. All that mattered to me was the tricky boss fights, the freedom to choose and the epic music (which I listen to unironically).
Zest Rating 9.5 Out Of 10. Golden Lemon, super Zesty. This game is a look into the masterpieces that TobyFox can achieve. I’ve still not played deltarune and need to. Powerful enough of a story to give toxic fans a backbone to aggressively backseat regular players. The outstanding soundtrack and plot-loop is genius. I would stream the game, but we all know why I don’t.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
jinxlgamez
Doubtful Player 