A game by Joymasher for PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One, originally released in 2015.
Odallus: The Dark Call takes place in a foreboding land that is slowly being consumed by evil. The old gods have stopped answering the prayers of mankind, and an aged warrior named Haggis (yes, like the meal consisting of sheep innards) must take up the sword once again to rescue his son from these dark forces.
Odallus is a metroidvania, but rather than offering a single contiguous world, it is divided into distinct levels. This is somewhat atypical of the genre, but this structure has been used previously in such titles as
Wario Land 3 and
Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse.
Thematically, the game draws its inspirations from the
Castlevania and
Ghosts ’n Goblins series, though the level layouts are most similar to Capcom’s unappreciated masterpiece of the macabre,
Demon’s Crest.
Like Demon’s Crest, levels are layered and nonlinear, with multiple paths to explore, alternate routes through many levels, and numerous hidden areas to uncover.
In Demon’s Crest, every level is essentially two levels compressed into one, with a direct path leading to the level’s end boss and progress to the next level, and an alternate path leading to a separate boss, with no small number of miniboss encounters in between.
Odallus is very similar in this regard, with some levels containing more than one boss, and several minibosses along the way, many of which are hidden behind large level branches that may only be accessed by using sub-weapons or new movement abilities. In addition, Odallus offers entirely new levels that can only be accessed by finding alternate branching paths.
