Onirike [Xbox]
Devilish Games’ Onirike is a strange fever-dream of a puzzle-platformer, in which you play as Pietro; a being with the ability to go invisible to hide away from enemies as he explores this unusual open world. Only, you don’t quite have control over this ability in the way you’d expect - you must walk through certain flowers to stay visible, as being invisible for too long will cause you to perish, so it’s best to only activate it when required. Gypsophila flowers can be planted around the world to give you ease of access to replenish, however you must first collect the pollen for these flowers during the daytime; a bizarre, floaty segment that occurs regularly. You’ve got a day/night cycle shown on your HUD, with the night-time being far slower than the day since this is the period where most of the gameplay happens, with the day being solely for flower-collecting.
The controls are quite frustrating with awkward platforming, and a pretty unstable camera that negatively impacts the gameplay further. Turning invisible to sneak past enemies, only to have to quickly find the flowers to regain your full-form once you get out of the way of danger is sometimes a bit of a pain, as having more control over switching your form would have been good. This could have been improved by having a button to trigger your ability, and having the flowers replenish a meter to switch back and forth - but instead it feels unnecessarily cumbersome, and counterintuitive. Likewise, the mini-map (the miniest mini-map I’ve ever seen) can’t be zoomed into, and doesn’t represent the world very clearly, so you end up just ignoring it for the most part.
Onirike’s visuals are what first attracted us to the game; the interesting Tim Burton-esque appearance had us intrigued, but it left a lot to be desired in action. It has a distinct child-like quality to it, with characters being reminiscent of the weird creatures we’d come up with in our doodles as kids, and the world itself seems to be made up of a mish-mash of different things, from a circus themed area to a ‘Putrid Zone’ filled with rotten, decomposing food. The audio is odd too, with dialogue tweaked to sound almost distant and ethereal - it gave me vibes of PS1 era Harry Potter games, with that strange airy quality to it - but the narrator’s voice weirdly works well with this, giving it a charming, almost kids’ TV presenter feel. The soundtrack, from Javier H. G. Belze, is probably one of the better aspects of the game with tracks that take you on a journey of mystery and whimsy, filled with atmospheric tones and evolving through the different areas.
As a puzzle-platformer, you’d expect puzzles to hold some weight, especially considering the platforming is weak - however the puzzles feel lacklustre and the story elements feel confusing and superfluous. You must find seven keys in order to progress, and these can be collected in any order giving you a bit of freedom as to where you go first, but no matter which route you take, it feels stunted and lacking. Even completing the game left us feeling a bit bewildered at what we’d just witnessed, before quickly forgetting the whole thing shortly after uninstalling.
Available for £12.49 on the Xbox Store, Onirike is a peculiar game with - sadly - not a lot going for it. It’ll take you around 6-7 hours to complete, so it’s not a horribly-long, drawn-out game by any means, but the lack of a sprint button and a large, clunky map makes it feel all the much more tedious to get through. It’s a shame really, as there are quite a few ideas here that we like, but it really could be doing with a lot of tweaking. I’d recommend holding out for a sale if you’re still interested in experiencing the weird world of Onirike.
Oddly enough, it’s even getting a physical release for PS4 and Switch (with wildly different prices, at £19.99 on PS4 and £34.99 on Switch), as well as a £34.99/£44.99 Collector’s Edition, which I hate to say is tempting me - as the Onirike rag doll is pretty cute in a terrifying kinda way, but I can barely justify the £12.49 cost of the basic digital copy, never mind more than double the price! I’d honestly love to get my hands on one to get a good look and see if the extra cost is worth it for the physical contents - but as of right now, I’ll wait.
In the end, we decided to give Onirike the Collecting Asylum rating of 5.5/10.
Have you played Onirike yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Badland Publishing for the Onirike Xbox review code!
