Every so often, I pick up an indie puzzle game or two as a palate cleanser between larger reviews. I go into these games looking to dissociate and get a few dopamine hits from the early-level trophies. While at first Öoo seemed to easily fulfil this expectation, what I found was pleasantly surprising.
A Lone Ö
Öoo is a quirky, 2d platform puzzle game where you use bombs and physics to solve puzzles and advance through a Metroidvania-style map. Your caterpillar avatar Ö can’t run or jump; they can only move left or right along the game screen. You’ll need to find bombs to help you traverse the world, but before you can do so, Ö gets eaten by a bird.
Now inside the mouth of the beast, Ö needs to find a way to escape. With minimal controls, you are forced to use momentum to traverse the levels until you find your first bomb.
Becoming Öoo
Over the course of nine areas, Öoo slowly introduces different mechanics by offering players two routes to take. One route will take players through puzzles that slowly ramp up in difficulty and introduce the physics in stages, culminating in a dead end. The second route will appear to be a dead end on first glance; however, the solution is there for those able to think outside the box. Because of this, players can skip large chunks of each area if they are knowledgeable enough.
Starting with one bomb, players are shown how to move their Ö around each stage. Then, once you have two bombs, you are shown how to use chain reactions to get even further. Bombs are also detonated independently, and you can leave them around the map while you get your avatar into place.
The mechanics are simple, yes, but they felt so good. Every way that bombs can be placed, moved or dropped is used to solve puzzles and progress. There were rooms that were incredibly challenging, rooms where I overthought myself into a hole, and others where I cheered as momentum carried me to victory by the skin of my teeth. I eventually shared my screen with friends, and the entire chat pitched in as we tried to solve some of the later levels together.
Da Bomb
While Öoo’s core gameplay and pixel art are excellent, I do have some gripes with the presentation. The menus don’t have text or explanation, and there is no home screen. I understand this was meant to make the game more accessible, but the menu images are so small that they’re hard to interpret. Similarly, the speedrun timer is hidden in a menu and starts the instant you open the game, making it difficult to use accurately without a home screen.
If not for the menu design, I think Öoo would quickly become popular, especially with speedrunners. However, I worry it could discourage people, which would be a shame. Largely, this presentation made me far more willing to accept that I had encountered a bug of some kind rather than a difficult puzzle, which was never the case.
Problem Solving Excellence
There were no bugs or soft locks anywhere within Öoo, as far as I could tell. It ran really well on PlayStation, and the physics never felt out of place. Some areas required you to find bugs to feed to frogs, while others required buttons and platforming, keeping each area fresh as you progress. The check points were forgiving enough that each area was fun, engaging and provided a challenge that I was keen to overcome.
Öoo is quirky, challenging and full of surprises. From such a small team, it is an incredible achievement, and I encourage everyone to see it through to the end for the full experience. Achievement hunters will see platinum within a few hours, but there are some secrets for the completionists to find as well.
Platforms: Xbox X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch
Publishers: AMATA K.K.
Developer: NamaTakahashi
Played On: PS5
Code Provided By: Keymailer
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