Welcome to our latest recap of what's going on in the indie game space. Quite a few intriguing games dropped this week and some high-profile ones have been ported to more platforms. Before we get to those, though, I'd like to tell you about one of my favorite games of the year so far.
I struggle to fully engage with many RPGs. By and large, I'm not interested in spending lots of time optimizing my character, speccing out a skill tree or scouring for the very best equipment to match my playstyle. I find it far more interesting when a game offers a limited toolset and a huge variety of ways to use those mechanics, typically by providing a small number of abilities and powerups as well as really clever level design.
Such is the case with Öoo, which arrived on Steam last week and is the latest game from Elechead developer Nama Takahashi. This is a puzzle-platformer that you can complete in one sitting and it's utterly captivating.
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You play as a caterpillar that uses a bomb — and later a second one — to blow stuff up and move around. If you want to reach a higher platform, you'll need to detonate a bomb you're sitting on. The controls are simple too, as you only need to move, and drop and blow up bombs.
The design of this game, though, is anything but simple. There's almost no text here, even in the menus. You learn by experimenting and figuring out how to navigate what's in front of you. You'll have to backtrack a bit to solve certain puzzles. It's so mechanically tight that a 15-second trailer is all you need to understand what Öoo is about:
I smiled the entire way through this one — even when I got momentarily stumped — and I let out a satisfied chuckle or two when I figured out solutions to problems. It helps that the visuals (by artist Hachinos) and audio are charming as hell. The title of the game is absolutely terrific, too. The umlaut is important because it makes the lettering look like your character with a pair of bombs trailing behind it. This is emblematic of the level of thought, care and detail that Takahashi and co. have put into Öoo. That extends to the end credits, which lists several games that inspired this one. Such a beautiful touch.
Öoo reminds me a bit of Animal Well. It doesn't have nearly the same level of depth as one of our favorites of 2024, but it doesn't need to. It's perfect the way it is.
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It also brings to mind another perfect game, Poinpy, with even composer Tsuyomi's work reminding me of that game's fantastic music. I'm still sad that it's impossible for me to play Poinpy right now, as it vanished from Netflix's catalog a while back. But Öoo did a bang up job of filling that hole in my heart. I can't recommend it highly enough.
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