Alwa's Awakening
Alwa's Awakening
Alwa’s Awakening, développé par Elden Pixels et édité par Mega Cat Studios et Elden Pixels, est sorti le 2 février 2017 sur PC, PlayStation 4, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Linux et Nintendo Entertainment System. Ce jeu d’aventure indépendant à composante plateforme, réalisé sous Unity, plonge le joueur dans la peau de Zoe, une jeune fille transportée dans le monde d’Alwa où elle doit libérer la population d’un pouvoir maléfique à l’aide d’un bâton magique. À travers un vaste monde interconnecté de style Metroidvania, l’intrigue mêle résolution de puzzles, combat contre des ennemis et bosses, et déblocage d’améliorations, le tout affiché dans un style pixel art 8-bit accompagné d’une bande-son chiptune originale de plus de 25 morceaux. L’expérience, facile à prendre en main mais difficile à maîtriser, requiert environ sept heures pour l’histoire principale et dix heures pour une complétion intégrale, et le titre est proposé au prix de 9,75 euros.
L’accueil critique s’est montré globalement favorable, avec un score Metacritic de 71 et un score OpenCritic de 72. La presse a salué l’hommage aux jeux rétro et l’équilibre entre détente et défi, comme l’indique COGconnected qui y voit une nécessité pour les amateurs de classiques, tandis que The Overpowered Noobs relève la réussite de ce retour aux codes du rétro. Certains joueurs sur Metacritic recommandent le titre aux amateurs de Metroidvania et de NES, qualifiant la musique de excellente et le jeu de joyau méconnu, même si l’un d’eux note une nostalgie teintée de défauts, et des avis Steam positifs soulignent la grande exigence du titre, avec notamment un système limité à trois vies.
Médias
Avis des critiques et joueurs
Critiques de la Presse (Metacritic)
« So that’s the importance of a retro game, and Alwa’s Awakening demonstrates it beautifully. With a few tweaks to make it a little more palatable to the modern gamer, Alwa’s Awakening captures the joy that can come from conquering a difficult experience. It doesn’t do anything new, but in bringing back the old, it shows how fun finding your own way can be. »
« It finds an excellent balance between being relaxing yet challenging and is sure to be a necessity for fans of classic gaming. Alwa’s Awakening is classic gaming for the modern gamer and an incredibly enjoyable experience. »
« Alwa's Awakening is a true, but beautiful, trip in the past. Everything is close to the old masterpieces of videogames, with only a few buttons that were able to do all the things a gamer needed. »
« Elden Pixels' first game is a charming NES-like metroidvania with some good puzzles and platforming. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, and may take a while to warm up, but eventually grows to become a really great (and tough!) 2D adventure. »
« This adventure is a great choice if you enjoyed old-school games from the late 80s or early 90s. A game that feels like it's taken from another time, well-designed and really fun. »
« It will get repetitive; it is formulaic; and you’ll likely have to fumble with maps and keys. These are to be expected, if not enjoyable. But you’ll run into a newer, far more potent problem: it isn’t doing anything new. »
« It's definitely worth a shot if you’re hankering for a bit of old school platforming action. »
« If you fancy a challenge and the price suits, you won't regret your purchase. Just don't expect your mind to be blown. [March 2017, p.83] »
Avis des Joueurs (Metacritic)
« If you like metroidvanias, and 8 bit nes style games than this is the game for you. Music is also great. great hidden gem »
« Alwa's Awakening feels like a precursor to Metroidvanias made 30 some odd years too late. I mean that in good and bad ways. Good in that it feels nostalgic and authentic. Bad in that it does nothing new. Still it's quite enjoyable...EXCEPT for some ridiculously hard platforming sections. of my nearly 250 deaths, probably half came from hitting instant death spikes because I didn't tap the jump button exactly right. It's infuriating. I'm praying that Legacy did away with this nonsense. If I didn't buy the bundle already, I wouldn't chance it. »
« A good metroidvania marred by **** difficulty. Nevertheless I enjoyed it very much. »
« Pros.: - Metroidvania. - Some nice mechanics like bubble and block. - Secrets. Cons.: - Dumb story. - Dumb mechanics of dying touching the spikes. It should be either a hit or a variety of damage. Because some parts of the locations make the game absolutely unplayable. And very few players would grind these levels until the end. - Poor health-weapon balance - too few. - 3 HP without upgrades - it's a joke. »
« [SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.] »
« Alwa’s Awakening es un juego completamente atemporal, que pudo haber salido en la época de la NES y funcionaría igual de bien. Un título que otorga, a grandes rasgos, un desafío interesante a la par de, valga la redundancia, desafiante a su modo. Te lo recomendamos sí: Extrañas los juegos de antaño. Pero, dejando de lado eso, vale completamente la pena. No te lo recomiendo sí: Ya te dije que vale la pena, de verdad… a menos que no te gusten los juegos retro o Metroidvania. Review: ****/arata-review-alwas-awakening-pc-steam/ »
« Alwa´s Awakening is one of the best tributes for the 8bit era I played. Besides lovely art and music the game/level design is impressive. Usually the gameplay design is missing in smaler indie games but not here. Interesting powers that are used in often tricky puzzles. »
« Alwa's Awakening is a fun game with some interesting elements. The challenge is there and uses typical retro-gaming ways of doing it with precise jumps and very predictable enemies. I found the soundtrack not very creative and somewhat irritating after some time and had to turn the music volume down quite a bit. Overall a fairly decent game for the price. »
