The ever-growing genre of games that mimic the old top-down Zelda titles has another entry with Ogu and the Secret Forest. Releasing on Steam at the end of last month, Ogu has gotten a fairly positive reception from early players. The hand-drawn 2D art and characters are certainly pretty charming, as is little hat-wearing net-swinging platypus protagonist Ogu.
Gameplay emphasizes exploring the world to find puzzles, secrets, and mysteries in order to recover some magical doodads or other. Trailers and gifs show a pretty cool variety of puzzle types. I can see push-object puzzles sokoban style, some mazes made of gates that rise and fall in patterns, even a match-the-tones style pattern puzzle using musical instruments.
Unlike some other entries in the genre, Ogu does still have the combat elements that were key to older top-down action-adventure games.
That means little enemies for sure, but it also seems like Ogu has an emphasis on some pretty tough bosses to beat. Battles against those bosses are unforgiving, requiring you to really learn how they attack to avoid the pattern and get in your hits while you can.
There are also cute things to do, like collect new hats and masks for Ogu or have Ogu draw sketches of the landscape—some of which contain puzzle clues and hints.
You can find Ogu and the Secret Forest on Steam for $18.
