This is Rainbow In The Dark, a series about games that actually contain colors. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Reader, I must apologize. It wasn’t my intention to have such a long break between posts in the Rainbow In The Dark series. In fact, shortly after writing the last entry on Knockout City, I started playing D-Pad Studio’s Owlboy, intending to make it the subject of my next post. But then Daggerfall Unity reached version 1.0, and I got totally derailed. I played that a ton instead, and wrote two posts about it, before finally starting Owlboy over from the beginning to play it properly. Now, at long last, I’m able to highlight its vibrant, colorful pixel art.

For me, Owlboy is a lot like Iconoclasts: I first played an early demo version of it years and years ago, back when high-quality indie games with impressive art were far less common. Then it was stuck in development for a long time, to the point that I assumed it would never be completed. When it finally released in 2016, I was surprised and intrigued, but also distracted by lots of other games. My Rainbow In The Dark series was the perfect excuse to finally pluck it from my huge backlog and give it a spin.

I was surprised by how familiar it felt. I recognized the opening sections of the game from when I played that early demo, although I think some of the story parts were not yet in place back then. In Owlboy, players control Otus, a young owl who happens to be a mute, as he teams up with his friends to investigate strange goings on near his village. That village, however, is scattered across some of the islands floating in the sky that make up Owlboy’s world. This aspect of the game, I’m now realizing, is similar to Ara Fell, another game that I played in early demo form long ago before it finally got an official release… in 2016. I guess that was the year for eventually releasing full games that started development in the 2000s? Where Ara Fell is a classic three-quarter view Japanese-style role-playing game, however, Owlboy is a side-on game that initially looks like a platformer. Except it isn’t really, because Otus has an authentic owl cloak, which means he can fly.

Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone else in this world manages without the power of flight. Most of the floating islands are tiny, hosting a single house at most, making navigation for those subject to gravity a mystery. Otus, of course, can hover in place indefinitely, and soar around to reach other areas, and he acts as transportation for his friends by literally carrying them around. They repay the favor by acting as gunners. Players steer Otus through the air with the keyboard, while aiming and firing a gunner’s weapon with the mouse (gamepads are also supported, I believe, but I stuck to mouse and keyboard). Sometimes Otus needs his hands for something, leading to some amusing cases of hurling his friends off a cliff or into a wall, and soon he gains the ability to instantly teleport a gunner back into his arms (or, indeed, switch between different gunners). This is all overtly video-game-esque, something that Owlboy acknowledges with a wink. Soon enough players will be flying around, shooting enemies, and solving puzzles.

Structurally, Owlboy might resemble a Metroidvania, but it’s not quite. It’s closer to a Zelda game, with an open hub area that connects to several “dungeons” (an in-game character even uses the word “dungeon” at one point, which was weird) that are mostly linear affairs full of combat and puzzles. None of these are particularly novel. There are dark passages to navigate, pressure plates to weigh down, armored enemies whose shells must be knocked off before players can damage them… all things that have featured in countless games before. There are even a few stealth sections.

Narratively, however, Owlboy dives into darker topics than the norm (another thing it has in common with Iconoclasts). The opening introduces Otus’s training under a strict and emotionally abusive mentor, and story events soon get quite heavy indeed. There are a few good surprises along the way, and I appreciated how certain mysteries were never fully explained. Those who enjoy digging into secrets will be rewarded with hints and theories as to what may have set the story in motion, long ago. Doing that requires going after all the collectibles, however, and returning to previously completed dungeons to grab those can be tiresome (I had similar complaints about specific locations in Ori and the Blind Forest).

Owlboy is, overall, well constructed and decently written, offering an adventure that’s compelling and not too challenging. What really makes it stand out, however, is its gorgeous art. The best way I can think to describe it is “modern pixel art“: it takes many of the aesthetics of classic game art, borne from limited display resolutions and color palettes, but removes those restrictions. The pixels are smaller, and there are more of them, especially for backgrounds. The carefully selected colors for a given palette remain, but where older games would be forced to use a single palette for the entire screen, Owlboy applies different palettes to different parts of a scene. Take this screenshot as an example:

The patches of grass are dominated by bright green shades, with the fronds of the larger plants bringing in some darker green hues. Yet the distant island in the background near the top of the image tints these blue, to show its distance through atmospheric haze. The twisted tree trunk on the left has yet another green palette, a little yellower and with some dark grey and black mixed in. Yet its leaves are bright whites and purples. The cyan sky mixes in lighter blue shades near the bottom of the image, while the clouds are shown with whites and greys. The rock formations feature several shades of brown when they’re in sunlight, but greys on their shadowed undersides, while the rock pillar in the background is more of a lavender palette, again as if viewed through haze. All told, there are far more colors than would have been possible in early pixel art, but each component of the scene uses a limited color set, with classic pixel art shading. There are even a few spots of dithering, despite the generally high pixel count. The high level of detail also makes it look like there’s no tiling or repeated patterns, suggesting everything has been drawn by hand. Owlboy definitely uses tiling in some areas, but the illusion of bespoke art everywhere is impressive.

For all these vibrant outdoor scenes, however, Owlboy uses surprisingly limited colors in many of its locations. This jungle area is mostly green and brown, for example:

Other locations, especially indoors, lean a bit into blue and orange contrast, which is overused in so many games, TV shows and films:

Many places rely on a lot of grey and blue:

I encountered enough scenes like this that I began to wonder if Owlboy was truly a good pick for Rainbow In The Dark. This series is supposed to highlight games that actually use colors, after all, rather than falling back on drab greys and browns or tinting the entire screen as a cheap way to emphasize a change in location. Owlboy is even guilty of such tinting at times! But it’s hard to be too critical, because even when Owlboy isn’t using its full array of colors, it’s still absurdly beautiful. Just look at that scene above. It’s mostly cool blues and greys, sure, but check out those clouds that hug the rocks, and fill up the background! They’re gorgeous, and without studying the screenshot closely I’d never be able to tell that they use some repeated art. The same is true of the rocky pillars in the background. Even the floor and ceiling — the flattest, most repetitive parts of the scene — are exquisitely detailed. It’s just lovely.

Heck, even when Owlboy goes almost completely monochrome, it’s still gorgeous. Check out this dramatic entranceway:

It helps, of course, that these subdued scenes are contrasted with Owlboy’s bright exterior skies. That’s not accidental. Every time I emerged from a dark temple or gloomy cave I was met with verdant islands floating in the glorious sunshine, and was reminded of what Otus and his friends were fighting for. It’s a world worth saving, even if it takes our cast to some dark places, figuratively and literally. If Rainbow In The Dark is meant to celebrate those games that shine through the murk of the gaming landscape, then Owlboy achieves a similar feat within a single game. It’s always wonderful to return to a scene like this:

Or to soar across these stunning skies:

Or to visit special landmarks like this:

Owlboy is a visual feast. I haven’t even mentioned its animations, which are wonderful. Every motion is brought to life through many painstakingly hand-drawn frames. Otus’s flapping cloak, or the various gunners’ weapon blasts, are a joy to behold. Even simple things have wonderful flourishes, like the way Otus’s cloak swishes as he turns to enter a door. Or the way a hastily thrown gunner collides with a wall before comically sliding down it, when a panicked player realizes that Otus needs to pick up something else in the thick of the action. The characters stand out a bit against the beautiful backgrounds by design, so the action is easier to read, but they are just as lovingly detailed as the places they explore.

The actual things you’ll do when playing Owlboy aren’t very innovative, but it provides such a resplendent world to do them in that I doubt most players will mind. Its story is more interesting than it initially appears, too. For fans of bright colors — and for exquisite use of darker or more muted hues — it will be a joy, doubly so for those who appreciate pixel art. If that sounds like you, I can heartily recommend taking flight and soaring through Owlboy’s skies.