Atomic Owl

Trees rush past at a pace, your character running at full pelt towards their final destination. You’ve seen it all before, but instead of a silver-haired vampire, you are met with the figure of an owl clad in a hat and cloak. You expect the classic jump through the drawbridge but are instead met with opening credits and a humble noodle shop. Welcome to Atomic Owl.

As far as openings go, this homage to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night evokes a nostalgic feeling, letting the player know to expect a similar blend of action and combat as the original NES Castlevania titles managed so well – but does Atomic Owl manage to deliver on its promise? 

From the moment you begin playing there is a disparity between the storytelling and the way it tells it – although not necessarily a bad opening, the false start brings you into a brief conversation with a number of establishing characters, all framed as members of your crew and vital allies in the fight ahead – it’s also worth taking the time to appreciate the game’s dedication to crafting superb character portraits, with every character posed in such a way that would make a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure protagonist do a double take – alongside the pixel art style that the game embodies, there is such an impressive air of neon and nightlife combined with a fairly broad Asian styling. 

The swift but steady story delivery quickly moves between core points – mind control, megalomania and, in an odd twist, bird-based imperialism – before leaving your character at death’s door. From here things start getting fuzzy, as you awaken two years later in conversation with a magic sword with eyes, hell-bent on taking down the evil imperialists and rescuing your brainwashed comrades. It’s important to emphasise that this story is delivered at a breakneck pace to allow the player to run straight into gameplay, again a relic of its devotion to NES-era gameplay, but it can make it difficult to become invested in the story without some more formal characterisation.

Above everything, an impressive synth-wave soundtrack coupled with crunchy, impactful sound design helps make the aesthetic and feel of Atomic Owl stand out – there were points when I would leave the game running in the background while sorting my washing just to enjoy the offerings of the game’s impressive soundtrack. Where the game plays host to an impressive visual and auditory feast, it sadly falls short in the core gameplay. 

Balancing a thin line between a roguelite and the inspirations of early Castlevania games, there is often a substantial dichotomy between how these two genres are generally executed, meaning the game feels at odds with itself – the loop of dying and retrying is a core part of any roguelite, but with enemies built to simply be a menace to the player and some attacks being difficult to see among other particle effects on screen, it often feels that deaths are unreasonable or unfair, particularly with how weighty the combat can be.

Your primary means of movement and attack come in the form of a close-range strike, a dodge that offers brief invincibility and a targeting ranged attack that supports in picking off weaker enemies or simply providing chip damage to tougher foes. The weapons themselves are interchangeable throughout the game as new ones are unlocked, including staples such as hammers and whips, but their differences can feel immaterial.

The stages remain largely the same with no procedurally generated content, instead being solely designed – this works well for metroidvania titles where backtracking is important, or even pattern recognition games such as Ghostrunner or Hotline Miami, but when trudging through the same unaltered areas for the hundredth time, getting caught by cheap shots or hit by something unseen due to the vivid background, it can lead to frustration. This is compounded by the lack of meaningful secrets or incentives for exploration – early on you are given bonus dialogue if you climb to a ledge that is otherwise difficult to access, but the reward is simply to be told how silly you as the player are for trying it – in turn this conditions the player to simply give up on exploration.

I desperately want to love Atomic Owl – it is both a stylish world and an intriguing premise which leans into cliche and comedic writing enough to be fun, but without taking away from the heart of the game – but the gameplay itself hampers everything it tries to build by blending two genres without giving thought to the things that make them both worthwhile; there is such a focus on fast and fluid movement throughout the areas, but the game itself fails to hold this point up with sluggish combat, often buggy movement, and ledge catches and double jumps being incredibly sporadic in their execution.

It’s also important to recognise the influences behind Atomic Owl and how they alter the flow of the game, because the inclination towards an NES-style platformer is very clear – not only in execution but also in the way the game markets itself as such; this influence is densely present in the striking visuals, but a classic attitude also brings classic faults, with this emulation of the joys of the original Ninja Gaiden or even Ghosts ‘n Goblins it pays to remember that these games had their origins in the arcade era, where completing a game in a single run was the golden standard – but by modern standards what makes these games compelling is what makes them difficult to enjoy today.

I have no doubt Atomic Owl will have its audience, but without a complete overhaul of the controls and the design of the world, it is difficult to recommend the game to the average consumer.