The indie games segment has long established itself as the fact that small studios go to interesting experiments much more actively than large companies. Indies are capable of surprising – with graphics, themes or gameplay. These games do not always come out sinless either, but they usually have some kind of special feature. All the more surprising is the case of Olija, which will be discussed below.
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Dark waters
Lord Faraday was shipwrecked off the Terrafagos Islands. Once on the shore, Faraday felt a strange craving for a mysterious harpoon – an ancient artifact that gives its owner incredible powers. At the same time, the harpoon and its new owner attract the attention of the Rotten Tree clan, a local cult whose goals are not completely clear. Together with a harpoon and a handful of survivors, Faraday will have to find the keys to a giant magic door that blocks his way home.
The plot does not shine with originality, but it provides sufficient motivation for the hero’s further journey. In addition to skirmishes with the Rotten Tree clan and the search for the keys to freedom, Faraday in his adventure meets a mysterious girl Oliya (whose name is included in the title) and feels some kind of special connection with her.
Drums of War
Mechanically Olija is an action platformer with small metroidvania elements. From the latter – the ability to replay individual maps in search of hidden secrets that were previously impossible to achieve. True, literally the first two maps, on which Faraday has not yet acquired a harpoon, have problems with access to individual zones.
It is he who is the central element of the game. The harpoon can be used not only in battle: it can be thrown in the manner of a spear and magically attracted to the object or the enemy into which it stuck, and inflicted additional damage – the same barrels from this break, dumping their contents. Throwing, of course, also does some damage. In close combat, the harpoon opens several types of attacks at once: a simple one gradually accumulates a combo and allows you to inflict a much more powerful blow under the curtain, and in combination with the direction keys, the types of attacks change accordingly. So, you can push the enemy or throw them into the air to deal more damage.
Additional types of weapons also add variety. There are four of them in the game, they open gradually. The first is the rapier, a not very powerful but fast thrusting weapon. The Rapid-Fire Crossbow, Musket, and Moonlight Sword are later revealed. With the first two it is more or less clear, but the last one is much more interesting: it not only deals good damage when it hits the enemy, but also allows you to quickly move to yourself, as in the case of a harpoon. Of course, some of the spatial puzzles are built on this.
The dangers of a lost world
While exploring the world is quite exciting: the local pixel art boasts good detail and a good elaboration of the chosen style, and the locations are full of secrets and various resources to collect, from crystals that serve as local currency to shells, claws of wild animals and bamboo stalks.
To make Olija even more interesting, the developers have added an indispensable attribute of modern games – collectables. Their role is played by ships in bottles and music boxes. They are hidden, however, as inexpensively as possible, and most players will be able to find most of them without even trying to explore the map. The story is similar with resources: all of them can be found almost by accident in quantities that greatly exceed the requirements of the game.
The exploration of the world is linear, but with certain nuances. At the beginning of the game, Faraday has access to only a couple of points, and most of the map is missing. It will have to be collected piece by piece while traveling, opening access to new territories. At the same time, most of the islands are traversed quite obviously, but there are really no forks in the game.
You should not expect especially difficult puzzles from Olija, most often the minimum voltage of convolutions is required from the user: for example, to conduct electricity to the generator, you need to charge the harpoon and cross the water without taking damage. Finding a solution is easy. The same applies to the use of a harpoon and a sword: in some cases, they allow you to open access to where you cannot otherwise get.
Place of power
Between adventures, the hero goes to the Oak Surf hub zone: here Faraday returns to rest and recuperate. The hub is gradually developing due to the arrival of new people (which, by the way, can also be looked for during adventures – the unfortunate ones are imprisoned in cells by the Rotten Tree clan) and the resources invested in it. However, there is not much to spend them on: you can build an alchemist’s shop, which increases the hero’s health, and equip a shop for a hatter.
Since there is not much to develop, resources are required primarily for the production of magic hats. Thanks to them, Faraday gains additional abilities that allow, for example, to ignore damage from poison or increase the attack speed with successful combinations. There are seven hats in total, and alas, there are no secret ones in the game.
It would be logical to assume that, in addition to improving health, you can pump other parameters, but alas: neither attack power, nor defense, nor speed can be increased. Why the developers did not add seemingly obvious things is a mystery.
Shades of gray
An interesting situation emerges: a good combat game, a simple but intriguing plot and a pleasant visual style that well supports the pace of studying the map. But all this was done in a strange way … ok. Fighting is interesting, but simple: you just have to master the combination of a rapier and a harpoon and in rare cases switch to long-range weapons (a musket, by the way, allows you to solve most of the problems in just a couple of shots), and there will be no difficulties at all. The story is the same with riddles: formally they exist, in fact they are so simple that they cannot be called riddles.
It seems that you can write off the shortcomings on a small scale and focus on good pixel art with really high-quality animation, but everything is ambiguous here. For all the elaboration, the style lacks individuality, which greatly undermines the efforts of the artists.
And something amazing is happening with the plot. The Terrafagos Islands are a dangerous and strange place with a unique history. True, the player will not be able to reveal the secrets of the land where fate brought Faraday: the plot is presented in strange fragments and does not really try to captivate. The presentation could be compared to the same Dark Souls, in which most of the plot and lore is sewn up in insignificant details, and on the surface there are very rough outlines of a real story, but Olija does not try to go beyond these outlines. As a result, after the passage, a number of questions about what happened remain, but the answers to them will not work: the game falls silent, not revealing its secrets and not giving enough leads for independent conclusions.
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