Nakawak (PC) review "Now it can disappoint you in full color"

Note: This is a review of the "Expanded Color Edition" of Nakawak.

If you bought a bad game ages ago, you were stuck with it. You either pretended to enjoy it to avoid offending your parents or forced yourself to appreciate it by looking on the bright side as much as possible. You would wish that someone would break into your house at night, reprogram the crappy cartridge you just got, and then sneak out before your dad could unlock his gun safe. Alas, it never worked out that way...

I think we can all agree that the internet has been both a curse and a blessing. While it may prove divisive at times, it also allows developers to perform the felonious act described above, minus alarming your weary, war-vet parent. Nowadays if a dev cranks out a junky product, they can ship patches via the internet that revamp it. Thus, titles with major errors or poor stylistic choices improve with just a download or seven, and you don't awaken to cursing and/or gunshots.

To wit, the pathfinding platformer Nakawak saw just such an upgrade. Initially released as a love letter to Metroid II and Game Boy platformers in general, this piece originally offered a limited color palette and a wonky, super-zoomed-in perspective that mimicked Nintendo's tiny portable screen. Some folks raved about the nostalgia packed into this adventure, but others decried it as a lackluster addition to Steam's library. I'm not sure what spurred developer Anxious Neck Games to tweak their baby, but their decision worked wonders for the game's presentation.



But the rest of the title? That's a different story entirely...

The lack of widescreen and bland visuals weren't Nakawak's only stumbling blocks. Don't get me wrong, though; redesigning those elements still helped a lot. With the former, you can now glimpse your surroundings more fully, allowing you to plan and properly outmaneuver your foes rather than clumsily stumble into them. Plus, the game's fresh coat of paint adds life and gorgeous color to the titular skeleton's quest. Some might charge the graphics as tacky and inconsistent with its darker themes, but they give the adventure the retro feel its developer sought. Sadly, the game no longer smacks of the black-and-green screen of Nintendo's handheld machine, but its new skin nonetheless calls to mind riding your bike home from the video store to play whatever 8-bit hot mess enticed your allowance out of you.

Unfortunately, even with improved hit boxes and a rebalanced initial boss encounter, Nakawak still isn't quite up to scratch. The first room you enter no longer gives off The Return of Samus vibes, but instead harks back to--dare I say it--Action 52. No, this title isn't even nearly as terrible as that accursed collection, but its assets are just as cheesy. You advance through the introductory rooms while awkward music thumps from your speakers, often sounding not all that different from a small child messing about on a music app or synthesizer. Meanwhile, creatures sporting rudimentary designs stalk the grounds, including beasts that resemble turds, killer commas, walking spaghetti noodles, and even a boss that looks like a massive pickle with eyes and spidery legs. Sure, you do come across a few things that look halfway decent (including a twisted humanoid that could've been plucked from an awesome body horror film), but they're overshadowed by murderous dinner rolls and cartoony flies.

Combat, thankfully, doesn't suffer as a result of these ho-hum models. The game handles as tightly as it ought to, decked out with simple, intuitive mechanics and a handful of mildly entertaining battles. Granted, most foes you bump into fall pretty easily and don't require much strategy or effort, but you do sometimes run afoul of monsters that give you a run for your money. For instance, a late-campaign segment constantly throws gigantic heads that pursue you in the utmost, causing you to retreat and take choice shots while also minding the vicinity for obstacles, pits, and other enemies.



The campaign plays out more or less as you would suspect. You explore for a short while, stumble upon a roadblock, and backtrack to locate a tool that allows you to cross it. This adventure, though, doesn't provide many crossroads or side routes along the way. Instead, you're in for a lot of linear sailing and only a smidgen of exploration that leads you to health and missile upgrades--the latter of which pretty much only exists so you can get past one segment.

Half of the entertainment derived from titles like this involves plotting out elaborate regions, wondering what surprises might lie for you in certain sectors, and scoping them out. Sometimes you locate something cool, coming away from those excursions feeling like a master treasure hunter. Other times your effort is in vain, but at least you've ruled out a certain pathway as useful. Nakawak doesn't offer nearly enough of that kind of content. Instead, it settles on being Metroid Lite, and manages to underwhelm even by that standard. You take one path, discover it isn't the right way, then voyage in the other direction. You continue that road until you find a new item, then return to the previous dead end to hopefully slither by. In the next region, you do the same thing...

Boss encounters could've been the proper test of your mettle, but fall apart when you realize you can easily beat most of these villains by remaining still in just the right area. You can defeat one boss, for instance, by standing in a certain place and leaping into the air and firing when it lowers an appendage You won't even take a lick of damage unless you're reckless. Even the final boss, a being that can best be described as a sweaty tree with a face, succumbs with minimal effort because the encounter offers plenty of nooks to duck for cover.



Honestly, my issue with Nakawak isn't that it's a broken mess of a platformer, but that it's a monotonous, forgettable "Metroidvania" whose only standout features are a bad soundtrack and a couple of hilariously designed bosses. It's an otherwise ordinary pathfinder that shouldn't take you much more than a couple of hours to complete, that offers nothing remarkable or noteworthy. Bear in mind that the game used to be visually unattractive and peculiar to play because of its zoomed-in camera. All of the patches it received merely improved it from "sub-par" to "mediocre."

This, of course, leads me to the duality of the internet I mentioned earlier. The "blessing" here manifests as video game patches, which can help to transform flawed projects into more acceptable offerings. However, the "curse" comes in the form of developers putting extra effort into crafting a game that still doesn't measure up to its contemporaries. Nakawak may have gotten a much needed face lift, but in its chest still beats the heart of an average platformer.

Community review by JoeTheDestroyer (December 15, 2021) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.