My only complaint about the bosses is that there is no boss rush mode at the moment. This is where learning the ins and outs of your ammo will come into play, with you cycling through to find the best ammo for each situation. Each brings a unique challenge but won’t wipe the floor with you. One breaks out into bullet hell while your ammo is limited to whatever falls from the ceiling. They are all music based and all rock in their own way. But what really takes center stage are the boss fights, literally. Musical enemies bring an ensemble of instruments to the fight, my favorite being the brass goon that attacks you with notes from his trombone. The wildlife has taken a cue from Avatar: The Last Airbender and combined critters into even cuter versions, the best being the Slug Cats (Slats?) in the mountain region. Thankfully the segments where the Copper Feather is a necessity are sparse.Įnemy variety in the game is a mix of wildlife and music-based enemies. The annoyance is heightened when moving platforms are added to the equation. It took me numerous attempts to get the jump to work properly. In one area, I tried to mind a gap that required me to jump into a waterfall. On the other end, the Copper Feather, an item which lets you jump gaps, can be a bit touchy. It’s a welcome change as you head into the last stretch of the game. The highlight of these items is the Banshee Streak, which not only grants progress but changes a core aspect of the gameplay. The Boneroot gives you the ability to pick up heavier objects blocking your path. There are only three items you gain throughout the story that push your progress forward. The Metroidvania aspect of Lila is on the lighter side. It’s nothing too drastic though, a few of those moments left me slapping my head when I realized what I was doing wrong. The game has some small hints to try and help guide you, but if you’re not on the same page with the game in those moments, it can leave you banging your head. It’s in this section where it is easy to get lost. There is a moment in the game where you think it’s about to end but there’s actually another hour to go. It’s not bad for the asking price of $14.99. My playthrough in which I got stuck a few times and also did some side exploring, took me around seven hours to complete. On the length side, you can run through Lila’s Sky Ark in about an afternoon. These additional items aren’t necessary to complete the story, but they do add some variety in getting around and how you approach combat. My personal favorite being Hatted Boot (yes, it is exactly that) which gives you a fast speed boost when equipped. Also available are recipes that can be used to purchase non-perishables. You can open an inventory wheel and pause the gameplay to find the ammo you need, but it feels like there could have been a second menu for your story-based items.Īmmo types vary across the board, with your single use pots and crates that do low damage, to smiley faces that spread out and deal small amounts of damage across a bigger area, like a shotgun. Cycling through, looking for the right ammo, just to land on a Sad Peanut you can’t use, slows things down. My gripe comes from story-based items being a part of your ammo inventory. You can only carry so many things in your bag, which is fine, since the game has upgrades that up your inventory capacity. I have a small gripe about inventory management.
Each pickup is documented in your compendium, but each type of ammo’s usefulness becomes more apparent with a toss. It’s a spin on combat that calls back to the live ammo of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath. This “living ammo” is stored in your backpack and can be pulled out and used at any time. They explore themes of depression and loss and actually feel like a letter someone would write and not just a random game pickup you find in the world.Įxploring four different biomes, players face off with enemies throwing different items and creatures they pick up throughout the environment. I won’t give anything away, but these letters offer a bridge to Lila’s life. In the background, players collect letters written by Lila, to someone from her past. The titular Lila is tasked with saving her psychedelic world from a music-obsessed army. Lila’s Sky Ark is a prequel to Monolith of Mind’s first game, Resolution, but fret not, the world and story stand on their own if you have no knowledge of the previous game. In the case of Lila’s Sky Ark, a pixelated action-adventure Metroidvania from Monolith of Minds, the developer has found the perfect blend of combat and puzzles and mixes them with an interesting world and an original game soundtrack that rivals some of the best music in the indie game scene. A developer’s second game can land somewhere between sophomore slump and finding a rhythm.
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