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And they laughed when I said we should be weaponizing maple leaves. Well, we’ll see who has the last laugh now…
A while back I played Inexistence and rated it at Tier 2, saying that it was a moderately fun Castlevania clone. Momodora is Inexistence on steroids. …but pleasant, soulful steroids. Actually, to compare it to Inexistence does the game a great disservice–Inexistence drew many of its strengths by parodying or copying mechanics from popular games of the SNES era, largely Castlevania. Momodora on the other hand, just happens to be a game in the same in the same genre as Castelvania and instead of copying other games, merely draws inspiration from them. In truth, it is completely its own game, with its own characters, setting, plot and story.
For starters, yes, you play as a priestess who fights with a leaf. They make fighting with a leaf fun. And cool. And look, I know it’s just a simple little thing, but I rejoice that I’m not playing as (sorry Inexistence) another meat-headed idiot who runs around slapping things with a sword. In a video game, you can do anything. Why not let your characters fight with a leaf? It’s just a fun idea! This is but one of many creative fantasy concepts the game places in its world.
The spritework in this game is beautiful, fluid and certainly not stingy on the number of frames for the animations. Some of the movements are so fluid from frame to frame that I couldn’t help but be impressed. Add to the smoothness of your character’s movement, the accuracy of hitbox detection and variety of enemies that you get to face simply playing the game is fun regardless of what’s actually going on in the plot.
The plot and mood haven’t been shirked on either though. The world is spooky and filled with despair. People huddle in a corner, begging for the madness to stop, strange skeleton-like entities give you advice on the mental state of the queen and strange Knightesses admire your courage but insist that your journey is in vain. It’s almost like Dark Souls, the way you travel in loneliness only to bump into a random stranger in the path. Eager to dispel some of the gloom and loneliness of the journey, you eagerly talk to them, only to discover a depressing mental state within them. Then, when you depart from them, you might feel even more despair than when you first met them.
Momodora is a Tier 1 pickup for anyone who loves platforming, Metroidvanias, gloomy J-pop-video-game settings, or pixel art. It’s a fun little game with enough mechanics to keep you engaged, enough spookiness to keep you excited and enough creative ideas to make you dream. What more can we ask of a game of this genre?
