There was a time we longed for more Metroidvania games. The Indie scene filled that void with great titles like Cave Story, Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge, Guacamelee, Dead Cells, and many more. Standing out amongst these “current” titles and still paying homage to the original Metroid and Castlevania is getting harder and harder. Outbuddies DX still tries though!
Lovecraftian inspired deep-sea adventure
Outbuddies DX lets you take command of Maritime archaeologist and adventurer Nikolay Bernstein and his a helping droid aptly named “Buddy”. Nikolay is in a particularly tight space as he is just waking up 36000 feet under the sea in Bahlam, a sunken fortress of the Old Gods. With no sense of direction and absolutely no clue how to survive this situation, you are welcomed “back to life” by Buddy. Your life-supporting droid pushes you on to go exploring and helps you out along the way. As you explore Bahlam you’ll soon find out, you’re not alone. Many creatures cross your path and aren’t happy with your presence.
Dodge roll everywhere
In the beginning, you’re basically defenseless which seems like an ideal moment to explain the dodge roller mechanic used extensively throughout the whole of Outbuddies DX. Your steampunk-inspired diving suit has the ability to use steam to perform a dodge roll which makes you invulnerable for a brief moment. Using this will get you past enemies and avoid getting hurt. Getting used to this mechanic will be of great importance for your survival in Outbuddies DX. Not long after mastering the basic controls, you will find a revolver, bombs, and rockets to greatly improve your chances of survival. But even then the dodge roll will safe you more than once.
Co-op with Buddy
Outbuddies DX is designed to be played solo or with a friend. The droid Buddy has special abilities like telekinesis, see-through vision, and hacking abilities to aid you in your adventure. When playing solo you can take control of Buddy by using the corresponding buttons. Nikolay will just stand there waiting until you perform the necessary actions with Buddy. When you actually play Outbuddies DX with a friend, one of you takes control of buddy and opens up a much less stale way of playing the game. While fun there will surely be a battle who gets to control which character. I found it much more fun playing Nikolay instead of Buddy. If you happen to like taking on the support role, you’ll probably be just fine with taking on the role of Buddy though.
Metroidvania
Calling Outbuddies DX a Metroidvania seems obvious since it actually looks a lot like the first Metroid game. Even the “doors” are copied out of the classic NES game. On the other hand, I had some trouble with the way the game evolves in the first few hours. After about an hour of gameplay, you already learned most of the abilities available in the game. There is some exploration needed to further perfect these abilities but you’ll be juggling abilities right from the start. I like to be eased into these sorts of “special moves” more as I discover more of the world. This ultimately comes down to personal taste but I felt the pace of this game was very off-balance in regards to the whole Metroidvania label.
Controls are “iffy”
With many abilities to be explained, the beginning of the game tries to explain most of these through pop-up info signs. I found it hard to decipher the icons used due to the pixel art style font used for these. I’ve since found out this is a general problem that will be addressed by the lone developer in future updates. So kudos to Julian Laufer for being so considerate to the community. After some trial and error, I eventually found out how to execute each maneuver. Since the amount of possible movements to do is so great (long jump, double jump, wall jump, …) I had a lot of trouble executing the right maneuver at the right time. There were also some strange occurrences when I would clip onto a platform more than once which I couldn’t actually reach if done properly.
Dark moody mush
The art style used took me back at the NES and SNES days which was great. The problem I had was that it could’ve used a lot more variety. I know it is supposed to represent a sunken fortress. Those tend to look dark and gloomy… But I felt some more color here and there could’ve helped a lot with my visual appreciation of the game. I found myself mistake enemies for scenery more than once which didn’t help to lower my frustration level. Boss battles, on the other hand, looked so much more interesting and vibrant it made me wonder why not more was done with the design in other parts of the game.
Conclusion
I struggled with the controls way too much to have a smooth experience with Outbuddies DX. I stuck with it (and actually restarted the game), and did find enjoyment out of this game but felt it underperformed in relation to other Metroidvania titles. Some problems the game has, are already being hammered out by the developer which might improve my feelings towards this game. But as it stands now, I’ll stick with a more “meh” feeling than a “wow” feeling.
