Alwa's Awakening is an action-exploration game in the same vein as the Metroidvania NES version. We play the young and intrepid Zoe who is a completely normal girl. After a nightly video game session, she wakes up in the game she was playing the night before. She will have to save the world of Alwa who is threatened by a mysterious evil. Using her magic staff and powers that she can unlock, she will venture into an interconnected world in search of bosses and secrets.
Alwa's Awakening therefore tries the risky bet of releasing a game with 8-bit sauce in 2017. There are aesthetics, gameplay and the same type of control. However, the game makes some concessions in terms of exploration with the presence of portals that allow us to move quickly between different parts of the world. No question here too of Game Over too penalizing, we can resume the game from the last save point. These are close enough to avoid any possible frustration. For the rest, we stay in the spirit and feeling of this kind of games. The charm is present whether in terms of music or deliciously retro graphics. The handling is excellent with an Xbox One controller and we will miss jumps and other actions only logically.
The super sweet chiptune
The game starts slowly with a few platforming phases and simple combat before getting tough up pretty quickly. You can talk to NPCs, listen to their advice and go explore a village in search of secrets. We will quickly understand that it will be necessary to go back quite often in certain places in order to access unaccessible bonuses at the beginning of the game. The more you press the jump button, the higher you will jump, so there will be some necessary learning. The game also offers us a well-made map that will allow us to easily find ourselves in the maze of rooms and corridors. Some objects will also help us not to end up as a roasted witch such as the bottle of water that should be filled in a well at the first opportunity. 
The environments are varied and we will have to explore the levels from top to bottom in order to find the keys allowing us to fight the bosses and then unlock a new power. Like any good self-respecting Metroidvania , it will then be necessary to go back and unlock new branches in order to go further. The powers are friendly and rather dynamic to use. They will be necessary to fight some enemies and especially some bosses. The game is pretty well thought out in terms of level design and we will only get stuck for a few minutes before finally finding the right place to go. Special mention for the power with bubbles that will allow you to apprehend most situations differently.
We affirm it without complex
Alwa's Awakening is not a very resource-intensive game as its aesthetics indicate. It will run properly on any computer and will not allow to go in high resolutions. We will be limited to a certain ratio but that we can put in full screen in order to make the most of the work provided by the development team on the title. It is of course necessary to play with the controller and the default keys are well thought out. I didn't find it any harder than that to move forward and the deaths are often logical rather than relentless. Time to learn the patterns of the bosses or to understand the timing of jumping in certain rooms and we will advance at our own pace. We have fun without frustration and this is a big difference between a game released in the era of the NES and a game released in 2017.
The lifespan is excellent, we will spend a lot of time exploring everything and trying to unlock everything. Allow 7-9 hours to see the end by counting the comings and goings. Be aware that the game does not yet support the Steam Cloud at the time of writing this review. This failure will force you to recover your save file if you want to play on another computer. On the other hand, the game has steam cards which should make your purchase even more profitable if you are lucky.
We are followers of the NES
Alwa's Awakening is a good game that should please anyone who loves retro games while keeping a more manageable difficulty. Don't expect to have an original game with unique mechanics, the game is and remains a friendly Metroidvania. The soundtrack is excellent with 25 original tracks written for occasion by Robert Kreese. Once finished, don't expect to go back unless you're a real fan of the game. Do I recommend the game? Yes, because the principle is timeless and the fun of the game is there. We are not in front of the game of the year but we have a lot of fun throughout the adventure and that's the main thing. 
Steam Page:
Video:
https://youtu.be/wnxxz1cFat4
This article was written by the editor-in-chief of the website Veuilezparlaprésent.
