 ALWA's Awakening is the first game by developer EldenPixels. It's an NES inspired platformer in which you play as a girl named Zoey who needs to save the land of ALWA from evil man, cold of vicar. The game's visuals are nice and the sprite work in the game is well done. It reminds me a bit of Shovel Knight. You'll find that the soundtrack is very true to the NES, with the developer even offering a soundtrack on an actual NES cartridge. At first you may think that this is a puzzle platform game as you travel the world completing many puzzles to get to the next area, but the game is actually more of a bite-sized metroidvania. You explore a 2D open world with many different enemies environments and a story as simplistic and non-intrusive as it is gradually tells itself through characters you meet. The game does a fairly decent job at pointing you in the right direction, with some areas being impossible to reach because they're too high to jump to initially, prompting players to find some way around this. The combat in ALWA's Awakening is very simple with one real attack being used for the majority of the game, which is hitting the enemies with Zoe's magic wand. You will eventually get one more attack later on, but the combat stays relatively simple throughout the entire game, with dodging enemies by jumping and crouching, playing a large role in the gameplay. Speaking of this, you may initially notice the jumping mechanics in the game is being a bit floaty. I don't usually like criticizing platformers for having floaty jump mechanics if the game design accommodates for it, but unfortunately this isn't always the case in the game as controlling Zoe feels like you're playing as a balloon sometimes. You'll get used to it quickly and you'll find that enemies are slow enough that the floaty jump mechanics work, but some issues do arise and I'll get to those shortly. So in ALWA's Awakening, you always have three hit points you could take before dying, and when you die you respawn at the latest safe point. Safe points take the form of tortures in ALWA's Awakening and there are very few consequences to dying in the game, as you will respawn with all of your progress being kept, including the solved puzzles, obtained items, and defeated bosses, and their unlimited lives, which I like. In order to make your way to the endgame, you are initially informed of four bosses that must be beaten in order to make it to the fifth and final boss. The bosses aren't particularly difficult, only requiring players to find some sort of blind spot or opening to attack, but it may take several tries to finally beat a boss. Along the way you will collect exactly three different powers. They are creating blocks that can be pushed around, creating bubbles that can carry you upwards a short distance, and shooting lightning bolts from your wand. So like I said, it's a bite-sized metroidvania. The tools you obtain are primarily for jumping to higher areas and getting through special doors, but later puzzles will require you to use every power you've collected up until that point. The world is also not as enormous as most games in the metroidvania genre. It's just big enough that it doesn't feel too small, but I expect players to have completely explored every inch of the map before finishing the game. There's also very few optional hidden areas in the game. String from the path will add most reward to you with a blue orb that will gradually increase Zoe's attack power, and that is it in regards to optional collectibles. To be honest, I was not very big on collecting these things. String from the path in All-As Awakening is not particularly rewarding, and I think it would be nice for the developer to have included more variety in collectibles. So All-As Awakening is part platformer and part metroidvania, with many puzzles popping up around the map requiring you to use the tools you've collected as well as the environment, and there are some well-designed puzzles on the game. I haven't touched upon the challenge aspect of the game yet, though. The game is intended by the developers to be their challenging game, with a death counter taunting you every time you die. And the challenge isn't like most metroidvanias. In fact, it reminds me more of platformers like the old Mega Man games. Like I said, you can only take three hits before dying, and enemies very rarely drop health points, so you can find yourself low on health very often in the game. I think it's a bit unbalanced, and enemies should drop health more often, but that's just my opinion. In addition, something I really don't like about the game is the inclusion of instant death areas. If you fall on water or touch spike balls, you will die immediately, regardless of how much health you already have, which I hate. Don't get me wrong, I like a good challenge, but there's a line between something being challenging and something being tedious. Metroidvania should not include instant death in my opinion because of the open-world nature of the game. By including instant death, you're essentially forcing me to slowly walk all the way back from my last 8-point just because of one stupid mistake. And it's very easy to instantly die in the game. Earlier, I said that floaty jump mechanics are okay as long as they don't interfere with you playing the game, right? Well, unfortunately, sometimes this happens in the game. You'll find spike balls on a ceiling at some point that require you to just tap the jump button, but because it's always literally a balloon, tapping the jump button for a millisecond too long will lead to an instant death many times. I hate an instant death spikes inside Mega Man, I hate them now still. Out of all the things you can take from the game, do not take this, please. And these spike balls do not go away. You will run to them too many times, so I'm definitely not a fan of that. One more thing I do not like are the inclusion of these weird walls you can walk through. Later in the game, in order to get to the next objective, you need to somehow guess that a specific wall in a specific room is actually not solid and can actually be walked through. The walls look like any other wall in the game. They aren't cracked, they aren't opaque, they aren't a different color. There is virtually no way to distinguish them from regular walls in the game, but they're still included in the game as mandatory to reach the next objective. And these walls do not stop. They just keep popping up near the end game and they are annoying every time. Even the game map doesn't acknowledge the walls being passable. There's literally no way to tell besides jumping randomly at every wall you see when you have nowhere else to go. I think this is an example of bad game design since it relies on guesswork way too often. The game gets way too cute with these damn invisible walls with them even throwing in floors that you can fall through into your instant death. Two of my least favorite things about the game thrown into one and watching the end credits explains all of this. Okay, now this makes sense. They're trying to make the game as annoying as possible. In conclusion, all of this awakening is a decent metroidvania. It's not too long or complicated with it having very simple combat and puzzles that will serve as being entertaining for a while. However, the inclusion of instant death, floaty jump mechanics and these damn walls that you have to walk through make the game really annoying at times. If the developer behind the game ever decides to do a sequel, please fix this stuff and you'll have a fine game on your hands. Other than that, it's a good game and worth picking up despite the few flaws which you should keep in mind before jumping in.