PEGBRJE: Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate and [Speer]
Cleaning Trees and Throwing Speers
Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate is a soft sandbox game made by Sokpop Collective, an indie studio that somehow has made a game every two weeks. In this title, players control Ollie with their friend Bollie (either as an AI or as a co-op player) as they both try to fix up their autumn location. There’s not many tasks to complete, but for some reason many of the items required to fix things are in precarious and confusing situations.
Generally, Ollie & Bollie will be maneuvering throughout the map attempting to complete the 4 tasks outlined on the letter they find in the mail. These tasks include replanting the orchard, wrangling the sheep back into their pen, fixing up the cart and building the shed back up. They complete this with only two buttons; one to pick things up, and another to interact with their selected item. Without an item, Ollie will jump instead which can lead to some hilarious situations such as jumping onto objects or Bollie. Their movements are best described as ‘constantly teetering’ and both of them are required to life some of the heavier objects in order to properly move them or use them. It’s quite funny to watch actually, this teetering-based movement — many times I would change directions and lurch to one side only for Bollie to raise his hands and run after me in a mild panic.
These co-op situations work quite well for Ollie & Bollie, even if Bollie is controlled by the AI. Since actions are limited to whatever actions the items grabbed can perform, players need to find the full extent of each item. The sheers at first look to just get wool from the sheep, but players are encouraged to think of what else they can cut with two sharp blades. That scenario of jumping onto another from earlier actually comes in handy numerous times while attempting to rescue stranded items from trees. Bollie tries their best to assist at all times, picking up items that seem important to allow the duo to have 2 items with them instead of just one which was nice. Unfortunately I ended up getting Bollie stuck in geometry a few times thanks to quickly entering and exiting an enclosed area, but this didn’t necessarily detract from the experience, more just made Bollie’s expressions more amusing.
It’s not a long title, but Ollie & Bollie: Outdoor Estate wants players to work together with another (or an AI) to clean up this already peaceful area. There’s no timer, no need for haste; only a serene forest to soak in and chores to do. It’s oddly relaxing to play, even during the frustrating moments when I got stuck or when Bollie got actually stuck. If I had a second person to play with, it may have gone better, but I wanted to see Bollie’s AI firsthand.
If you need something relaxing while giving possible frustration thanks to the nature of co-op, then this is definitely a title worth your time.
[Speer] is a puzzling platformer made by Ohsat Games, a one man indie studio with a penchant for platformers. In this iteration, players are a tiny person that has a single goal; upon spawning from a capsule, reach the other capsule to be transported to the next level. Sounds relatively standard, but this little character has a hidden specialty up their sleeve; the ability to make their own platforms.
As the name suggests, [Speer] is about utilizing a projectile — a spear, go figure — to create a platform in order to make jumps. Once thrown, the previous spear immediately disappears, so if players are standing on them they are in for a rude awakening. This does open up each level to creativity however, as with this ‘mobile platform’ players can approach each level in some slight variations to the possibly ‘requested’ path. Difficulty begins to spike as new mechanics are introduced, such as walls that cannot be speared, switches, bouncy interactable sponges and even tiny flaming suns that destroy spears. These help tot give even more variation to each level, and this is all just within the first 30 levels. There are 100 total to beat, building off of the simple mechanic to create something overtly complex yet rewarding for discovering the solution and executing the perfect plan.
There’s also another feature that [Speer] implements that I’ve praised other games for doing, and will praise it again here; the ability to skip levels. As a resident ‘garbage platformer’ still, being given a prompt that asks if I’m being frustrated and wish to skip the level was a nice added touch. Granted, I was mildly annoyed as I had died in silly ways before the prompt so it felt like it was mocking me, but that was mostly just the circumstances that I was in. It’s not the easiest accessibility to add, even though it is on a technical level, as many strings of levels build up player abilities and expectations by solving the puzzle of the level. By skipping that, players run the risk of finding themselves in a vastly unfamiliar and difficult scenario that they have yet to be prepared for. However, Speer handles this well by allowing players to return to those levels at any given time if they so desire, and only giving the prompt after so many deaths.
[Speer]’s is a simple yet deep platformer that gives so many different options thanks to that tiny spear player’s will be wielding throughout the game. The retro graphics will give some nostalgic feelings to those that are familiar with older arcade titles, just with a more finely tuned control scheme. If you are looking for a platformer that gives you more control over which platforms you actually get to take, this one should be on your radar.
