Ovivo review

Creativity often breeds originality, and originality leads to curiosity. We should all be grateful for the ID programme and their search for the very best Indie games and developers across the globe such as Ovivo.

Indie games often offer a change of pace from your triple A titles, they’re also developed totally differently, often with a bit more pride and passion. Indie developers pour their heart and soul into their projects and are often formed of very small teams of bright and alert members. The mechanics behind the gameplay are key, as is the concept of the game. Indie game’s try to capture the player’s gaming soul. Nail that and the title will provide the gamer with an engaging original experience, something even the top studio’s try to replicate, and don’t always succeed.

Developer IzHard and publisher Sometimes You bring Ovivo to the Xbox platform, a Mesmerising platformer with unusual mechanics, using monochrome graphics where everything is as simple as black and white. The Developer’s IzHard have certainly created something that is intriguing and original, using the harmony of Black and White in its colour form, to constantly intertwine and replace each other, offering a unique original platforming experience, and a concept of restoring a need to maintain balance.

“Ovivo uses a wonderfully created Flow mechanic system.”

The character you play in this unique platformer is called OVO, born of two halves with the ability to utilise and switch between them. It’s over to you, the player to guide OVO through a metaphorical world, collecting peculiar symbols and overcoming unimaginable dangers. The Mysterious symbols that you collect form the objective of the experience on offer in Ovivo and provide the process in unravelling the story behind this stunning peaceful game.

Yes, Ovivo is what I would consider a peaceful game, certainly a non-violent journey, something to chill out and relax with after the heavy hitting of a triple A title. Ovivo offers a hypnotising journey, where although the objective and processes behind the game becoming clear, the story behind the symbols and OVO evident, but ultimately it is left for the player to use imagination and interpret.

Ovivo uses a wonderfully created Flow mechanic system, where in the form of white, gravity points downward, and in OVO’s black form gravity shifts to the upward position. OVO’s momentum is all about maintaining balance and order, a bit like yin and yang. OVO’s inner balance in this distinctively unique experience is preserved when transitioning from one half to the other, from Its white half to its black half. OVO has the ability to float along the borders, as if being carried by a flow of movement. This mechanic system, leads to an ease of understanding, and forming an excellent pick up and play control system, where the mechanics are easy to get a hold of, but rather hard to master, as you look to make OVO flow through the peaks, jump to the next border and even avoid those tricky obstacles that will halt you in your tracks.

Ovivo is work of art in the sense of the games design and backdrop. The allegorical world of OVIVO is full of hidden images and optical illusions, the artwork on offer is simply fascinating if not intriguing.

The game’s narrative is inspiring in its design, using not one word throughout, the story behind the adventure is purely created using visuals and gameplay, offering a mysterious trance like journey, which goes hand in hand with Ovivo’s ambient soundtrack by Brokenkites.

Ovivo is quite simply a truly unique game offer story telling through game play with out the use of speech or text. The experience and flow of the mechanics behind the game tell the story, and the graphical artwork on offer is mesmerising. With a chill out stance in terms of gameplay, the whole package intertwines perfectly, and although it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, you should all take the time to look into this wonderfully created game, and appreciate its very existence.