Review: Awaria Packs a Great Story & Challenge in a Tight Package

Awaria is a tense game of split-second decisions. While its levels are brief, you will spend every moment gauging distances, examining your needs, and trying to figure out how to slip past dangers that are constantly creeping up on you. This probably sounds a bit more relentless than generator maintenance should be, but when ghostly smooches are on the line, you’re understandably more inclined to do everything you can to get the job done. Even if you die a lot in the process in this bullet hell kiss ‘em up.

So, you’re in charge of repairing generators to keep up shields that keep apparitions at bay. Seeing as they’re busted, though, the apparitions have arrived and aren’t keen on you fixing things. There are an array of ghosts that will attack you throughout the game, each having their own special attack patterns you need to dodge around. The ghosts will try to catch you and smack you, fling multi-directional shots around the arena, leave traps on the floor that you have to skirt close to so that you set them off, and more. These tend to change every single level, or quickly stack on top of one another as the ghosts work together in harder levels.

If you want to survive a level in Awaria, you need to fix the generators in each room a set number of times to restore the shields and make yourself safe. Thankfully, all of the parts you need to do your fixes are in the same room as the generators. However, the machines that provide the parts often have some sort of quick to make them spit up the goods. Some need you to manually click them and then wait for the part to be made. Some require parts from other machines before they’ll give you the completed thing you need. Not only this, but you won’t know which parts you need until you click on the broken generator itself.

Now, each level is contained to a single screen, so it’s not like these things are far apart. Once you know which parts you need and which machines will provide them, you can quickly plan your route. That’s good, as the ghosts are relentless in their attacks from the very start. They never let up on you, so you’ll need to figure out the best path to take that will get you away from ghost attacks while readying machines to prepare your repair parts or picking those parts up to be delivered to the generators. While the small levels make planning that route straightforward, the small stages also put you in constant danger as there is only so much wiggle room around the enemy attacks. And the stage hazards, because why not add some more danger?

This results in some fantastically tense play throughout Awaria as you continually adjust your path on the fly. You always need to be thinking about what parts you need and how you’ll reach them. You’ll need to change that plan when one of the ghosts comes rushing your way or if they’ve set some hazards in your path that you now need to skirt around. Juggling this while glancing at the generators to see what parts they need, keeping stock of which machine needs to be prepped to make the parts, and doing so while a fast ghost is filling the room with fireballs is exhilarating, dizzying, and incredibly challenging. Did I mention that you usually need to fix the generator on a time limit as well?

Thankfully, there are a few difficulty levels you can choose from every time you start a stage. Easy mode gives you a drone that revives you after you get hit, but has a short cooldown before it can be used again. Standard gives the drone a ten second cooldown (which is basically an eternity when things get busy). Hard cuts down the repair time limit and you die in a single hit. Even playing on Easy Mode was quite challenging (although very doable if you’re persistent), so don’t expect to have ghost kisses just come floating your way without effort.

You’ll likely be willing to put in the work, as the game’s story and character interactions hint at an interesting overarching lore somewhere beyond your character’s need to kiss the various ghosts that keep breaking things down here. While Awaria doesn’t spend much time on its story, it offers just the right amount to entice you to keep playing. The art style also makes for some cute, evocative characters, and it’s just fun to see how they all get along with each other. Despite the whole thing where they’re trying to kill you.

Awaria is just a tight, punchy package. Its tiny levels are crammed with challenge thanks to the ghost abilities, hazards, and part retrieval mechanics. Every moment feels like it needs all of your focus to get through, and you’ll spend many stages scrambling to finish. The story and characters manage a ton of charm despite only being on-screen for a few seconds between stages. The various difficulty levels give you something to strive for it you want to challenge yourself or if you just want to see the endings. It’s a great little game that costs nothing to play, so you have no reason not to get on it right now.

Awaria is available on PCs via Steam.

9

Awaria

Awaria is a short game about working in haunted maintenance tunnels.

Awaria is just a tight, punchy package crammed with demanding stages, sharp storytelling, and cute kissable ghosts.

Food for Thought

• Awaria squeezes a ton of challenging things into a single screen and layers new problems well without feeling exceedingly frustrating.
• It hits just the right amount of tension in its hectic stages with its brief playtime. You have to play very well, but never for so long that its exhausting.
• It also lays out a great story with interesting characters with only a few sentences and some art between stages.

Reviewed on PC.