Owls are kinda weird, what with all the hooting, the 270 degree neck rotation, and the constant thievery of my Tootsie Roll Pops. But according to Owls Ever After, a cute and puzzling piece of interactive art originally made by Mike and Tanya Mezhenin for Ludum Dare 31, they just want the same things that we do: a safe home, a loving family, food on the table, and a new game console every three to five years. Owls Ever After lets you take a peek into to the secret life of owls, one year at a time. And it's pretty friggin' adorable.
Use the mouse scrollwheel or the [arrow] keys to move forward and backwards in time on the radio, correcting and adjusting the memories of the past. Some memories are hidden in darkness: turn on the fairy lights (those colored ball things) to unhide them. You can turn on fairy lights by clicking, but only if you have a power source of the same color as indicated by the seven lights on radio below. You can get more power by clicking mistaken memories and things that don't belong. You can tell if a scene has something more to be clicked by if its radio indicator is red. There is no particular win or loss condition, but all the lights can be turned on and all the mistakes fixed for the full story. Despite too-sparse instruction and some unfortunate pixel-hunting, Owls Ever After is a heartwarming little saga told well, with a lot of subtle narrative details in its gorgeous art. Like the similarly-themed January, the game a quiet slice-of-life tale that manages to evoke all the joy and all the melancholy of its wintery setting, while still, y'know, having a bunch of cute Strigiformes playing Twister. In short, Owls Ever After is a wonderful bedtime story, and owl you'll need to unwind at the end of a long day.
Going to the first scene and clicking the right-hand pane crashed my Unity plug in - twice!
I think that is a unity headache, not a game headache.
This Game Is 5/5 Stars!!!
In the scene that says "who could have done this" and "I hope the roof doesn't come in" click the trunk of the tree, top left, above the clock.
That was mildly depressing.
@Tenzhi: Why do you say that? I mean, we do see the owl family having some hard times, but I thought the overall idea was just showing them and the differences in their lives year to year.
Charming graphics and I liked the music, but the instruction to "click on incorrect memories" was entirely useless. It became a clickfest and that distracted from enjoying the story, which was rather nice.
It all ends in tears and loneliness.
I have one more incorrect memory to find. It's somewhere in the second to last scene, but I can't find it. :(
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