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Once again I find myself in the land of difficult platformers with Lumenox Games' Aaru's Awakening (that's a mouthful). I'm not the best at the so-called “hard-core” platformers. Luckily for me, Aaru's Awakening only appears to be in the category, but mostly just skirts the line.

Most of the puzzles I've come across have been difficult, but not frustrating. It's an odd difference that separates this game, but in other games where I've died and died and died yet again, I haven't wanted to come back too often if at all. Aaru's Awakening had some boss fights and levels that straight killed me so many times it was rather embarrassing. I remember being stuck on one level (the levels are rather short) for more than thirty minutes. The very first boss fight took me about two days. I woke up early this last Tuesday to spend my last thirty minutes to finally tackled it.

The main pull is that the game is fun and with the tools given (not just jumping, but teleporting and charging) in Aaru's Awakening, when you fail, the successful attempt feels close at hand. If you've played any games in this genre you may know the difference between thinking a jump is impossible and being able to see how you can solve the “puzzle”. Lumenox Games accomplishes this well.

I'd love to say something about the story, but I feel it's a little lost in the action. Nothing is given to you while you are dying in the levels themselves. That's the main reason I know that (in the game) Dawn, Dusk, Day, and Night were at war and eventually decided to split the day in four parts and share the twenty-four hour period. (Sharing is caring right?) However, you (Aaru) are sent by Dawn into the others domain for... some reason, but like I said, I can't remember.

The game is narrated by a girl/woman who does a great job telling the story. The problem lies in that just after she's done giving you the setting for the level, you go into a meat grinder. In the game you come across stuff that will stump you and keep the end of the level just out of reach. Since the difficulty is tied to timing and the platforming itself, I can't turn down the difficulty to enjoy the story by itself. So the meat grinder just beats it out of my memory. When I get back to more narration I have no clue on why Aaru is confused with his actions or why he was sent into the domains of the other three parts of the day in the first place. Am I a bad guy? I just don't know.

Score: Gewd.

In the end, while I may not know what exactly is going on, Aaru's Awakening is fun. It's got genuinely hard parts for sure, but it never seems out of reach of being able to accomplish. When compared to other games in the platforming genre recently, this one feels friendly and approachable. This is very welcome because I've been bombarded lately by “hardcore” frustration-filled platformers. I'm kind of tired of them... completely tired. It's not that I'm terrible at them, but I'd rather be filling my gaming time with enjoyment. Aaru's Awakening delivers.

It's a really well done platformer with a teleportation ability. The game is really challenging but always fair. There are also medals you can earn for each level if you're fast enough and compare your time on the ladder or with friends.

For my first playthrough where I just completed each level once it took about 5 hours but the real challenge is to find the fastest way through each level.

There's not much to say about the artstyle, it's gorgeous with it's handdrawn backgrounds and smooth animations.

If you like platformers definitely check it out.

It's artwork and visuals are amazing, and the music goes nicely with them. Gameplay wise it's probably not the best 2d platformer on steam, but it's teleport gimmicks make it quite unique. The game's intended to be challenging but at some points it's stops being challenging and simply becomes tedious, the boss fights being the main culprits.

Nevertheless I felt I got my moneys worth out of it for 15$, and I will probably try and improve my times at some point.

Am amazing visual feast and very innovative yet challenging gameplay. 10/10

Beautiful and innovative.

The are so many good indie games out right now. But how do I know which one is great? I just ask one question:
"How the game would do, if it would've been released in 2007-2010?" - The Golden Era for indie games with World of Goo, Super Meat Boy, Braid and Aquaria.
I can safely say, that Aaru's Awakening would definitely do great.

Some of the challenges make me want to break my mouse soo bad, I love it!

Played it till my fingers bled, this is a very challening game!

The concept behind this game is nice and the artwork is awesome, though I truly hate playing sidescrollers with keyboard+mouse! I'd still recommend you to pick it up (when on sale or bundled).

5/10

I love the puzzles I was just going to try the game for a few minutes and those few minutes turned into nearly an hour. So watch out cause this game is a time killer!

Aaru's Awakening is a hardcore platformer, with a unique, hand-drawn graphic style.

I first saw this game featured in GameJolt, and assumed that it was a result of a game jam.
When I saw it come to Steam, I was pretty excited to try it out.

Unfortunately, this is a game that seems to be constantly in an internal conflict regarding exactly what it's trying to achieve.

I've completed the game in about 3 hours, and then played a bit more to get some better times, and look around a bit more. If you go for the leaderboards, you'll certainly take fairly longer. There's also an hardcore mode that seems infuriating.


The game is beautiful. I just played Child of Light, from a much larger company, and this game still looks pretty damn good!
Everything is highly detailed, the creatures look alien (in a good way) and the Bosses have a really nice design to them.
The menus and loading screens are also highly stylized, and give the game a very unique vibe right of the bat.

Even the animation is very nice! The main character follows the mouse-point/analog stick, with different walking animations depending on where you're pointing.
It's a pretty rare thing, especially with indie games. It's very well done!

However, despite being a beautiful game, it completely misses its target in regards to its genre : hardcore platformer.

I'll go over some crucial aspects of the genre (regarding its visuals):
Conveying information quickly, making it very clear what will kill you and what will not;
Good differentiation between foreground and background elements;
Keeping distractions to a minimum;
Clear hitboxes;

The second and third are, of course, to aid the first, the most important.
Of all of these, this game only manages the last. Its hitboxes are well limited.
All of the rest, unfortunately, has been largely ignored, it seems.

The game uses mostly one color palette, per world
Of course, it's an aesthetic choice. And the game looks good. BUT, when everything has very similar colors, you simply cannot convey information quickly. Many, many deaths have happened because I couldn't see the obstacles.
In a game that requires fast reflexes, obstacles are usually identified by peripheral vision. This game has none of that, resulting in a very trial and error experience.

There's also the fact that some foreground elements seem obstacles, and you can never be sure until you run into them.

There's no time to appreciate its visuals
It's a fast paced game, with leaderboards. Your objective is to cross the levels as fast as you can. So... where exactly, does the player take the time to look around and be amazed by the game's amazing style? ... There's no time for it. Even the bosses. I've looked at them, but not for long at all -- otherwise, I'd be killed.

And it's really unfortunate. The game is beautiful, but it's mostly wasted potential.
The visuals are in complete conflict with the gameplay, instead of taking advantage of each of their highlights.

Other than that, feedback could be stronger, but isn't too much of an issue, as you die in mostly 1 hit. The "death screen" is also kind of annoying, but hey...


The Music is also pretty good! It's very passive, though, with mostly eastern sounding melodies, with some tribaltextures. I enjoyed it, and it loops well enough. It also doesn't restart when you die (that I noticed, as least), and usually keeps playing, even when you go to the level select screen. I would have liked it to be a bit more active, but it's mostly personal preference. It works well in the game.


I'll give the Story a paragraph, this time around. I think it was cool, to give the game some context, but I also have 2 issues with it.
The story is "original" (i.e. not taken from somewhere else), but it was pretty cliché. What it did, however, was give a bit of flavour about the mythological nature of the game, which is cool! And it has a nice cyclical theme to it.
One of the problems is that it was very barebones -- which is understanding in an hardcore platformer. However, I would have expected some more to go along the visuals.
The other one is that it's told exclusively outside the game. It's just a narrated piece of text between each world...


The game has 3 tutorial level, and then 4 "worlds", with 4 levels each, plus a Boss-fight in the end.

Your character can walk around and jump, with a couple of abilities. The first is a Dash, while in the air. This dash can break some types of walls, and otherwise works as a double jump, essentially.
The other is Teleportation. You shoot a little ball of light, and then teleport to it. This ball richochets some surfaces, sticks to others, and can also be destroyed by some (and enemies). You can also kill some enemies by teleporting directly inside them.

With that, it's mostly a game of avoiding enemies, spikes, and pools (and other hazards).

It's also sort of physics driven. I say sort of, because the physics are extremely artificial, and often cause more problems than it solves.


Teleporting into enemies to kill them
Enemies kill you with one touch. I think the problem is self evident. If you do as much as miss the enemy by a pixel, you'll touch them after the teleport and simply die. This happens quite a lot. There's also the problem of "enemies that can not be teleported into" not showing any sign of that. So, you can also repeatedly try to kill them until you realize why you can't.
Enemies also shoot projectiles that will kill you and the teleportation ball. It's often a mess, with several enemies on screen.

Countless cheap and unavoidable deaths
Back to trial and error. There are enemies that come from off-screen. There are other that walk into you immediately, when you reach a new screen (usually Boss fights that rely on teleporting into another screen).
Then, there are huge spiked balls that fall when you enter a new area...
The game is full of these deaths. You're focusing on one particularly challenging section, and when you're almost reaching the end, the game "surprises" you with more death. It can be annoying, since it's just about memorization.

Artificial physics
The game has some ramps to accelerate you, and throw you into a fast paced section. However, these don't actually function according to physics. When you touch them, your speed simply goes from 2 to 50. Even if you touch the extremity of it, you gain exactly the same speed. If you want to slow down and do the section in another way... tough luck.
Then, there's falling acceleration. Of course, your speed gets higher as you fall. Unfortunately, the teleportation conserves that acceleration, which means that successfuly pulling a second one in the air is virtually impossible. I could have seen some interesting sections, if you could teleport and reset your speed... Yet another limitation.

Too punishing
Level design-wise, the challenges seem to long. Usually (and I've mentioned this in the Yury game), platformers have platforms that make you safe. This game seems to think that's too easy, and almost every platform falls. This stretches the challenges a lot, at times, and makes the game quite frustrating.
There's one chance for everything. You can't recover from your mistakes. If you miss a jump, too bad... Everything falls and everything is designed to kill you. It's simply not fun. And it's not a fair challenge either. (Super Meat Boy is one of my favourite games)

It's an ambitious effort! But, for the reasons above, the negatives far outweigh the positives.
Ultimately, it's made of pieces that don't fit together... Still, the talent it clearly there, and I'll look forwward to their future games.

Jezus approves

A somewhat challenging game, but interesting mechanics that make it a lot of fun. The beautiful artwork alone is worth playing for.

Love this game :) have been waiting for it. Looks like we are in for a long night :D

Overall this is a great platformer that you should try if you find it on sale. It has amazing art and good mechanics. Things can be clunky at times but that is few and far between. Do not expect much storywise but everything else is amazing.

10/10