Olija Review. One indie story is more beautiful than the other!

Olija is an action platformer with the help of which its author Thomas Olsson told an unusual story of despair, love and self-sacrifice. He wrapped the story itself in a wrapper made of classic pixel art, which resembles several good games at once, from the closest analogs - the  Cave Story metroidvania . But unlike most games of this genre, Olija turned out to be not just "jumping" on the platforms, but an intricate adventure with elements of mysticism.

The game tells about the misadventures of Lord Faraday, a petty nobleman whose people survive by catching fish. At some point, Faraday's "business" goes downhill, and he goes on a journey for luck and enrichment. At the beginning of the game, his ship is shipwrecked - the whole team drowned, captured or perished in distant lands, and the lord miraculously outwitted death and woke up alive on the shores of Terrafagos.

It's even somehow scary to enter ...

We are given to play from the part when Faraday came to his senses in an unfamiliar area and was forced to look for the surviving crew members. Instead, the character finds a cursed harpoon that gives the owner legendary power, and soon discovers the mysterious Oliya - a certain princess with whom the hero reveals an intricate platonic connection.

There are many cutscenes in the game - the way they are made is reminiscent of classics of the 90s such as Flashback and Another World.

According to the authors, the mysterious world of Olija was drawn by hand, I quote, "based on sailor legends and oriental fantasy." There is a lot of truth in this: despite the originality of the local world, it intertwines mysticism and surroundings in an interesting way, so familiar to fans of pirate games. Faraday himself is forced to become something of a pirate - he begins a hunt for the feral cannibals of the Rotten Tree clan. 

Olija is Skeleton Crew Studio's second game. Nobody helped the studio with the debut project - BackSlash - and it went unnoticed by a wide audience. With Olija, the situation is the opposite: Devolver Digital has made a lot of efforts to catch up with the release of Little Nightmares 2 in February, and at the same time to outstrip the main competitor in the line of January releases - Cyber ​​Shadow. By the way, her review is already available on our website. 

Olija is composed of hand-drawn locations that form a single large-scale pseudo-open world. In reality, the passage of the levels is quite linear, as in Ori and the Will of the Wisps , but at any moment Faraday can return to the levels already passed and try to get some more coins to develop his "hub". That is, Olija is only partially metroidvania .

After rescuing the mysterious Hatter, our hero will be able to acquire hats with magical attributes from him

Gradual character leveling, finding items to upgrade your home port, searching for missing "teammates", as well as collecting a collection of hats with various magical effects - just a part of what Thomas Olsson diluted his game with. In Olija is, without doubt, an interesting combat system that allows you to combine attack harpoon with auxiliary tools cannibal murder: a sword, an old musket and crossbow. But the game ends faster than you have enough time to play enough with the "combat" and its tools.

Gradual character leveling, finding items to upgrade your home porOlija's short duration is very depressing. It took me only four and a half hours to complete the game. It was a great four hours with a good in-game aftertaste, but as a fan of the NG ++ platform Dead Cells , I lacked the complexity and variety of combat situations. Olija gives the impression of a large-scale adventure, but in fact turns out to be a chamber and compact game. Perhaps she puts storytelling above gameplay, that is, the story is more important here than the gameplay, which in the end remains less than we would like. 

Olija has a free demo, which, as it turned out, makes up almost a fifth of the entire game. And if after passing the main claim is the duration of the storyline, then everything is fine with the game. Good but not enough., searching for missing "teammates", as well as collecting a collection of hats with various magical effects - just a part of what Thomas Olsson diluted his game with. In Olija is, without doubt, an interesting combat system that allows you to combine attack harpoon with auxiliary tools cannibal murder: a sword, an old musket and crossbow. But the game ends faster than you have enough time to play enough with the "combat" and its tools.