For this writer, the game felt more like I was patting my head, rubbing my belly, hoping on one foot while trying to learn a dirty Russian limerick and deking between high-heat laser beams. That's my way of saying, the game isn't easy. In fact, most of my advancement felt more like an accident than anything connected to competence or “gam3r skillz.”
Aaru's Awakening is a side-scrolling platformer puzzle game that features a weird chicken/gorilla hybrid (the titular Aaru) navigating a series of increasingly difficult environments themed after times of day: Dusk, Night, Dawn and Day.
It's wonderfully animated and has a neat “sketch” look that I immediately liked, which is a good thing because the difficulty of the game spiked so high that the style was the only thing that kept me playing the game.
Using the keyboard, players move left and right with A and D, respectively. Pressing W makes Aaru jump, which is where things started to fall apart for me. My brain has permanently mapped the spacebar to jumping, but in Aaru's Awakening the spacebar causes Aura to perform a charged dash move that allows him to smash through parts of the environment. Aura will make this move in the direction the on-screen reticle (controlled with the mouse) is positioned. In real terms, this meant I was constantly mixing up the charge/jump move and winding up doing things I didn't mean to do (like splashing into lava or a wall of spikes).
With no way to fight, Aaru's method of attack is charging and firing a ball of energy that can ricochet around. The ball of energy doesn't cause any damage, but the target is ripped to shreds if Aaru instantly teleports while the ball is inside the enemy. Mostly though, the energy ball is used to navigate each environment, such as firing the ball through a tiny slot then materializing past an otherwise insurmountable obstacle. It's all done with a couple of mouse clicks.
A lot of levels had me close to crushing my mouse. The demand for absolute precision, while reacting to split second and unexpected changes, and trying to master controls that felt like they should have been simple, boosted frustration levels close to breaking point. There are some sections that require a very complex set of movements that I all-too-often failed and would be almost through – I could see a checkpoint! -- then charge instead of jump and have to try again. Load times are mercifully short between deaths – you could die and respawn a dozen times or more in a single minute – but even then Aaru's Awakening is probably the most frustrating game I've ever played (or at least in recent memory).
Some players love this kind of instant-death/redo challenge but I'm not one of them. As much as I like the style, I never bothered with trying to achieve anything except level completion, because the insane “gold” goals, like finishing some a level in 46 seconds (when it took me close to 15 minutes) will be forever out of my grasp. I don't mind a fair challenge, but as I've wrote above, my progress nearly always felt like I got lucky rather than a result of practiced skill.
- Aaron Simmer
Follow @EmpireArmchair
The Good:
- The style and animation is great
- Cool moves
The Bad:
- Playing effectively will require a lot of head patting and head rubbing
- Loads and loads of instant death and seemingly impossible puzzles
