An empty-handed Otus will also automatically summon his last-used friend into his grip the second a player tries to make use of one of those friends’ weapons, and the shoulder buttons on an Xbox 360, Xbox One or PlayStation 4 controller swaps between them. Aiming a weapon will snap the reticle to the most likely targets within range. While picking up, carrying, swapping and using these other characters could have easily been a chore, Owlboy has streamlined this aspect pretty effectively. Allies are unlocked as you progress, and coins accumulated by digging up treasure and flying through aerial loops can eventually be used to soup-up their skills as well as Otus’ health. One ally’s fiery shotgun, for example, can be used to blast enemies and obstacles alike, daintily light lanterns, or raze patches of vines and leaves to ash in the wind. Each of them has a different weapon and a different utility to make use of, from guns to grappling hooks, and they can interact with the game’s environments in different ways. Progressing through the branching world map requires his skills (spins, rolls and, of course, the power of generally unlimited flight) as well as those of his friends, whom he can summon and carry as he flies about. Though most of these aren’t masochistic in their difficulty, no player will leave a stranger to the crumpled and broken frame of the game’s hero, Otus the owl. Make no mistake: Owlboy is about clever boss fights and punishing platforming puzzles. The demands of the game itself are not always as kind. On the surface, Owlboy is all clouds and feathers and friendship staged in the sun-soaked floating archipelago of Vellie. If that seems like a heavy message for a game about a cute little owl kid and his friends, well, welcome to Owlboy. The point is that everyone fails, has failed, will fail, and that’s OK. Perceived failure and genuine failure, inherited failure failure that’s fresh as a wound. Heroes still triumph of course, as they tend to do, but there’s a thread running through it all that speaks to a level of doubt, insecurity and imperfection that too many such stories barely skim in comparison. Whatever its fanciful and highly approachable style might lead you to believe, Owlboy is a game about failure.
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