Owlboy review: Bird with a broken wing

Owlboy is an adventure with a lot of charm and a great cast of characters, but the control scheme and lack of other features leave something to be desired.

Developer: D-Pad Studio
Publisher: D-Pad Studio
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (version reviewed), PS4, Xbox One, PC
Release Date: February 13, 2018

Owlboy has had an incredibly long journey to becoming a full-fledged game release. Development started on the indie title about a decade ago. It finally released on PC in late 2016 to wide acclaim, so the long time in development proved to be worthwhile. Of course, there’s only so much of an audience you can reach on any single platform. It took a bit but Owlboy has spread its wings and come to consoles in early 2018.

While it’s great that the game is available on a wider variety of platforms, and it is certainly one of those games that seems like a perfect fit for Nintendo’s new hybrid portable console, the Nintendo Switch. But not every game that seems like a fit for that system turns out that way.

Starting with the positives, though Owlboy certainly has the look of an old school 16-bit game we see far too often these days, it has a style that evokes that era wonderfully and does something of its own with it rather than just copy it. The characters and enemies and areas all have fun, bright, colorful designs and animate wonderfully. This is punctuated by an excellent soundtrack that successfully pulls off making you feel uplifted, sorrowful and in grave danger when appropriate.

The cast is mostly great as well. Most of the villainous Pirates, the main antagonists in the game, are pretty nondescript, but your partners have clear personalities that shine through (with Alphonse being a personal favorite of mine) and just about every character has a pretty cool personality. The only downside of this was that I wish the NPCs in the game had a little more involvement to flesh out their stories more. Maybe a personal sidequest. But as is, they are charming characters that simply don’t get enough of a showcase.

My problems began with the controls. Now, I have not played Owlboy on PC, so I don’t have a comparison to that original version. But some of these problems are definitely specific to the Nintendo Switch version itself. You control the protagonist Otus, and while he can fly and dash and roll, he doesn’t really have anything in the way of offense. That’s where his partners come in. Throughout the game, Otus gains various partners with different abilities that he carries around to do most of the fighting for him.

Sometimes the screen just went all crazy during a boss fight. One time it went dark for no reason and just stayed like that.

While you control Otus, you are also controlling these partners. And it’s really, really complex frankly, and could be simpler. You often have to maneuver around while aiming and pressing the button to shoot your partner’s weapon and be ready to dash at a moment’s notice because Otus is often too slow to get out of the way of attacks just by flying quickly enough. There is no option to change controls in Owlboy (at least in the Nintendo Switch version), and I feel something as simple as at least the option to make the right analog stick automatically fire whatever direction you push it in would’ve made things far easier. This is very specific to the Nintendo Switch itself, but the best setup by far I found was using the Joy Cons docked on the Joy Con grip or a Pro Controller. That’s just simply far from an ideal set-up for taking the game on the go or playing it in bed/on your couch. This would be less of an issue if the game was more about exploration and puzzle solving, but combat is a huge part and can get incredibly difficult which makes precise controls essential.

There are also just some simple quality of life aspects Owlboy could’ve greatly benefited from, such as there being some sort of map and some sort of ability to fast travel. If you need to go back to an area, the only option is to trudge back the way you came. And simply knowing where to go is incredibly obtuse. There’s also not much in the way of upgrades or new abilities, which is kind of surprising for this style of game. You get a couple extensions on your life bar if you collect enough coins and trade them into a vendor, but you don’t get new abilities or stronger attacks, what you have at the start is pretty much what you get.

More worrying than any of that was the number of times of I ran into bugs in Owlboy. Again, I can only speak to the Nintendo Switch version, but the game crashed several times during my playthrough. Sometimes the screen just went all crazy during a boss fight. One time it went dark for no reason and just stayed like that. On a couple of occasions, I got stuck in a wall and could not move.

Ultimately, I still find Owlboy a very charming game that I think people should check out. It’s got a great look, tremendous music and a very fun cast. The real shame is that the Nintendo Switch version, which you would think would be the ideal version, suffers from bad control issues and some troubling bugs that make it hard to recommend for that console.

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A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this review. All scores are ranked out of 10, with .5 increments. Click here to learn more about our Review Policy.