Ahh, this is just what the doctor ordered. I've spent most of this week figuring out "The Lament Configuration of Shlooters" that is Warframe and hitting several walls in Nioh (though not literally; you can never tell where a nurikabe is hiding). Odallus: The Dark Call is the sort of straightforward 8-bit throwback that provides a tonic to more trying gaming experiences. The product of JoyMasher, the Brazilian Indie studio behind the similarly old-school action game Oniken, Odallus fancies itself a bit of a Castlevania or a Ghouls N' Ghosts: the player makes their way through a series of spooky stages filled with grisly beasts, with plenty of item upgrades and secret exits to discover.

Odallus is also a spacewhipper, which was something I didn't know going in (Oniken was definitely not one of those). Many of the secret exits and upgrades can only be reached with the right gear, necessitating a few return journeys, and each new piece of traversal gear can make earlier levels so much easier to cross than they once were. Later levels, of course, assume you already have a number of these items and will use that to justify their sudden platforming difficulty spikes. That said, the game was never all that difficult on its standard setting, and I even took down its triple-stage final boss fight after only a few attempts. I think all that Nioh has fine-tuned my enemy pattern recognition. While accessing every stage and defeating its boss is mandatory for reaching the end - the titular Odallus is a demonic gemstone of some considerable plot importance and its pieces can only be recovered by completing every one of the game's varied and enjoyable boss fights - you could potentially miss out on (or skip, if you so choose) most of the more difficulty-abating power-ups.

While a fairly standard Indie spacewhipper of the type you've seen several times before (I know I have, but that's my fault for constantly seeking them out) some special recognition should go towards the game's aesthetic. It's unearthly creepy in a way most horror games aren't, leaning more into the body horror of demonic fiction where many of its creatures alternate between the Barkeresque and the Gigeresque (including the requisite xenomorphs, which were ubiquitous in Contra and elsewhere). It might be because I see Berserk similarities everywhere, but the game's central conceit - the demon bosses you're facing are former humans who sacrified many lives for their eldritch power, styling themselves as the new gods and revelling in their hideous forms - is very true to that manga, including the way these powers are all sourced from making deals with ancient demonic artifacts. If more games want to look to Berserk for inspiration, I'm not gonna stop them.

There's not much else I can say about Odallus, given it's not going for anything too complicated (by design). The pixel art is fantastic if that's your deal; the game makes great use of multiple layers of parallax scrolling and some well-constructed cutscene imagery. It has some suitably moody chiptune VGM though nothing that really stands out. The localization is extremely rough: there's a lot of incorrect tenses and typos, and I doubt anyone who speaks English as a first language even looked at the game's script before it went out, let alone a professional proofreader. I can forgive it to an extent - a game like this isn't really aiming for a Nobel Prize for Literature and a smaller studio has to prioritize the areas of development that are the most crucial - but it's still a black mark on an otherwise competent product. Also, due to the game's scratchy though period-correct sound samples, I could also never figure out what the gregarious shopkeeper was saying when you talked to him: it sounded like "wizard gunge", and I'm pretty sure I'm not in the market for any of that.

Overall, Odallus is a faithful recreation of a NES game that never was, with enough concessions to appeal to a modern audience (I love any stage-based spacewhipper that lets you "save and quit" at any point once all the nearby collectibles have been found) but beyond that it's nothing too remarkable. If a solidly put-together retro spacewhipper with an intensely eerie visual style is enough to pique your interest, give it a look.

Rating: 4 out of 5.