Down Ward is a beautiful and spooky pixel art puzzle platfomer where you control a little owl that ventures into the haunted wilds.
Previously featured on Alpha Beta Gamer way back in 2015 when it was in Alpha, Down Ward follows the journey of Gable, a cute little owl who sets out to rekindle the ancient relics of a long abandoned civilization. In each level of the game your aim is to find special and use them to activate an ancient totem. You’re not alone there however – ghostly entities haunt the ruins and will instantly kill you if they touch you.
Aside from the gorgeous pixel art visuals, the core feature in Down Ward is your ability to fly. The flying mechanics are quite different to most similar games (and more realistic), with you requiring to have forward momentum to gain lift. This means that you can’t just fly straight upwards and you need to carefully manoeuvre yourself so that you don’t hit anything (if you stop moving forwards you’ll stop moving upwards). It takes a minute to get to grips with, but it’s a great mechanic that works well within Down Ward’s cleverly constructed levels.
The Down Ward Beta build features a sizeable chunk of gameplay and really impresses with its fantastic pixel art animation, captivating soundtrack and interesting world design. The flight mechanics work exceptionally well and later levels can get extremely challenging, requiring some real precision as you avoid hazards, fight ghostly enemies and solve cleverly constructed puzzles. A beautiful and unique owl adventure you will give two hoots about. Highly recommended.
Check Out the Down Ward Kickstarter Page Here
Check Out a Gameplay video Here
Download The Down Ward Beta Here (Windows)