Alwa’s Awakening (Switch)

Retro throwback games have decades of hindsight to help them out when it comes to reproducing the experiences of old video games with the lessons learned through the failures and successes of games released since the era they’re referencing. Games like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest both attempted to make large interconnected worlds host sidescrolling action and puzzle solving, but these older games were pushing into new territory and genres and stumbled as they learned what worked and what didn’t. Alwa’s Awakening, however, has the benefit of seeing their successful elements and failures clearly, but when it came time to try and build a more modern take on this style of gameplay, it still fell into a few pitfalls that hold the experience back.

 

Alwa’s Awakening involves exploring a large interconnected world known as Alwa, a land where a villain named Vicar has ruled for centuries with his dark magic and minions. Zoe is called over from her world to collect the ornaments that can help restore Alwa to its former peacefulness, although this small bit of story doesn’t really receive much closure as its ending following a fairly easy final boss only hints at more adventures to come. However, Alwa’s Awakening does successfully hearken back to the 8 bit games that inspired it with its visuals and art direction. Detailed backgrounds and colorful sprites look great despite the deliberate limitation of using the old-fashioned styles to create them and objects of importance are clear and distinct so even when the game doesn’t tell you what something does, you can quickly guess what should or should not be interacted with. Alwa is even a world with enough distinct environments that you won’t necessarily need a map to have a good idea where you are, although the map certainly does help when it comes to the circuitous and lengthy traversal that drags the game’s pacing down.

 

Alwa could have been a decent host for the adventure, but there are a few design choices that hurt the game’s pace and navigation. First and foremost is that Zoe herself is somewhat slow, and since most areas of Alwa have enemies or a puzzle to get around, moving through it for traversal’s sake can take a considerable amount of time. Alwa is a Metroidvania style world, brimming with secrets to find behind false walls or areas you can only access after you unlock an ability later in the game, but backtracking is hampered by the slow game speed and limited interconnectivity. Even finding the area warps meant to teleport you quickly between places isn’t helpful enough when there can be areas where a single drop will lead to a long excursion around puzzle-filled rooms just to get you back to where you started. If you do keep focus on progression you can avoid some of the tedium from this map design, but Alwa is also a world where your next destination can be hard to figure out. There are a few hint-giving characters to help you along your way, but navigating back to them is again a bit of a process. If there had just been an item or other means to quickly get to the few warps in the game, some of the longer moments of slow traversal could have been skipped, allowing Alwa’s Awakening to cut a better pace and encourage more exploration, but luckily, there is some life to be found in the experience when you are moving forward and facing new obstacles.

There are five major dungeons in Alwa’s Awakening, the danger of exploring these coming down to puzzle platforming challenges with lethal consequences for failed jumps or poor solutions. For the most part, enemies in Alwa’s Awakening are not so much combat challenges as they are hazards standing in the way of whatever puzzle you need to work out. Faces in walls that shoot at you, skeletons that guard small platforms, wizards who punish you for standing in their line of sight, and more are dangerous to your success when you can only take three hits regularly or six if you have a water flask on hand, but since killing them usually only requires a smack or two of Zoe’s wand, they’re mostly there to make you approach a puzzle correctly rather than putting up a good fight. A block pushing puzzle for example may need you to block enemy shots with the same block you’re trying to get on a switch, although enemies are often used just to encourage proper jump timing instead of always being deadly puzzle components. The bosses are, in essence, puzzles where defeating them is the solution though, but these are unfortunately a bit simple. Most involve just finding the right place to stand so you can place some cover or jump at the right time to avoid getting hurt before you deal your damage, many fights having a spot or two where you can hang out to make victory only a matter of putting in the time.

 

Puzzle design and map navigation in Alwa’s Awakening mostly tie to three main spells you unlock across your journey. The block is the workhorse of your magical powers, its simplicity deceptive as you’ll constantly find use for it either as an impromptu platform to reach higher areas, something to weigh down a switch, or cover from dangerous attacks. Bubble magic comes later and provides a moving vertical platform to ride to even higher areas. Lightning is your only offensive spell, albeit one that doesn’t get as much puzzle use save the very plain use of opening doors marked with a thunderbolt. All three spells need time to recover from, lightning taking the longest to limit its use as a long range attack, but it’s usually easy to manage your spells and the recharge time actually relates to some of the game’s more involved moving puzzles in some interesting ways. Many of the puzzle rooms in Alwa’s Awakening do just boil down to placing blocks or bubbles right or using their later upgraded versions to reach new areas, and this does mean the general designs of them are simple to figure out. If you can’t figure out a puzzle, it’s usually because you don’t have the right tools for it yet. The final dungeon of the game does really start giving you more to consider than which tool allows you to jump high enough though, so Alwa’s Awakening is not without its clever puzzles, it just perhaps puts a few too many in the back end of the experience. At least up until then though it never feels dull primarily because of the hazards put in the path of solving straightforward block or bubble puzzles.

Alwa’s Awakening wants to imitate the difficulty of the NES era in some ways but knows not to dip in too far. Enemies are predictable and surmountable, but the game does feature deadly drops into water and lava as well as instant death spikes at times, some of these positioned to punish a failed jump or improperly executed puzzle solution. Sometimes the spikes are too tightly packed for their own good, meaning Zoe’s body must be positioned just so or your jump needs to be just the right height to avoid instant death, but these won’t be a problem… provided you have Assist Mode on. While Alwa’s Awakening urges you to play the way the designers intended with Assist Mode off, if you do, a death takes you back to save points that are spaced pretty far apart. In a brilliant bit of save design they do at least let you keep anything you’ve collected since last saving so you won’t have to repeat everything after a failure, but at the same time, this doesn’t feel like it adds much to the experience except more backtracking. With so many instances of instant deaths for slight errors, Assist Mode’s option of having you respawn in the room you died in instead of back at a save point helps Alwa’s Awakening from becoming a frustrating experience. If anything, it allows the more hazardous rooms to shine as you can enjoy the challenge of their puzzle elements without the threat of having to do a bunch of rooms over and over just to get back to where you were when you died last.

 

Although searching Alwa for its secrets can be cumbersome, there are plenty you can find while on your regular path through the game. Alwa is host to many false floors and walls that appear to be real but Zoe can pass through freely. The Switch controllers will actually rumble if you are near a false wall or floor, meaning you can take a break from forward progress to explore around for helpful goodies. The most common rewards for going off the beaten path are blue orbs, these serving as the main collectible and one that helps during boss fights by taking bits off the boss’s health before the fight. Other exploration rewards can include things like a prisoner you can save who gives you hints for the boss fights, a coin you can trade for the healing water flask, and other optional treasures that lead to greater rewards if used in the right place. Save for needing to plunge deep into a dungeon with no easy way out to grab a blue orb or two you were barred from earlier, the secrets are mostly a great way to add the proper type of depth to the world of Alwa where you can divert from forward progress briefly to solve a puzzle or seek out a hidden passage to get a small reward for being observant or clever.

THE VERDICT: Finding things in Alwa’s Awakening just takes a bit too much time, whether it be where the puzzle platforming really shines or where you’re meant to go next on your adventure. The interconnected world of Alwa is a decent host to many small puzzles that can be enjoyed on first visit, but the backtracking due to the way the world is connected strain the experience and makes the mostly simple challenges a bit less enjoyable for it. Assist Mode can help get around some issues like puzzles that are a bit too eager to kill the player and set them back, the removal of some backtracking allowing the player to better enjoy the more challenging puzzles and the quest for secrets. The spells and room layouts do their jobs well enough, but factors like slow puzzle difficulty progression and unclear goals leave it as a game that’s simply passable rather than one that truly improved on the 8-bit video games that inspired its design.

 

And so, I give Alwa’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. The fast respawn option of Assist Mode really smooths over part of Alwa’s Awakening that could have been damning otherwise. Instant death traps in a game where backtracking through long single direction passages full of puzzles could definitely drag down a game with already slow movement, but being able to go the main menu and flip on an option to make it so you can enjoy a room’s challenge instead of get bored by repeating it over and over means the spikes and water pits that can kill you instantly for small mistakes won’t necessarily make this game as frustrating as it could be. Framing it as putting your pride on the shelf to accept the better design option is a bit unfortunate, but with it on, the good parts of Alwa’s Awakening can shine. The puzzles are often simple but poke your brain just enough they’re still fun to complete and the secrets are abundant enough that you can enjoy exploration even without indulging in the flawed backtracking. You will retread some areas too often, especially when the game stops pointing you to your next destination as much, but when you are moving forward things are interesting, just not as universally clever or creative as they are in the final dungeon when the game finally pulls out the more imaginative puzzle designs.

 

Alwa’s Awakening learned from some of the mistakes of Zelda II and Castlevania II but kept others. Problems with finding your next destination persist even in this modern take on their designs, but the puzzles and actions taken along the way are more often enjoyable and clearer than its predecessors, an Assist mode helping to avoid the unforgiving nature NES games became infamous more. Alwa’s Awakening took some steps forward that ensure it can be a decent experience, but it still takes a bit of pushing to get around the problems born from its retro-inspired design sensibilities.