Oyadius review: why?

While playing Oyadius, I began questioning the purpose of its existence, which eventually led to me questioning my own place on this Earth.

As far as I can tell, Oyadius was made without any intention of earning money. There are neither in-app purchases nor ads. There aren’t even pop-up windows asking you to rate the game. Is it possible that Oyadius was made for the sole purpose of entertaining people?

If so, it certainly does a good job. Oyadius is a throwback to old-school top-down shoot-em-ups, featuring a color scheme that will remind you of your first Gameboy.

The gameplay is really nothing new or groundbreaking—you shoot at and destroy alien ship minions until the great grandfather alien Oyajius appears for a boss fight. After you defeat him you’ll fight more minions again, repeating the cycle. The difficulty gradually increasing each cycle; aliens appear in larger droves and fly in increasingly random patterns, and even good ol’ Oyajius increases his rate of fire with each encounter.

There are no bombs or powerups in Oyadius, but there are some pretty unique features. You can’t just hold down the fire button and let ‘er rip—you only have a max load of ten shots, which gradually refills over time. This means you can only fire in short bursts, a system that encourages you to actually try aiming.

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Your ship’s hull can also take ten hits before a game is over, but there is no invincibility period after getting hit—if you stand in the way of five enemy shots, you’re going to take five hits. Yeowch.

I played the game for good amount of time before I realized I hadn’t turned the sound on yet. When I did, I heard exactly what I was expecting to hear—MIDI 8-bit music, and a pretty catchy tune at that. The sound effects were also incredibly satisfying, it sounds kind of like you’re squashing a bug every time you kill an enemy. Of course, the usual “pew pew pew” sound effects were spot on as well.

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Oyadius’ greatest weakness is also its greatest strength—it’s really weird. The only clue given as to why you are fighting a giant alien head is the brief game description on the game’s app store page, but the description is so ridiculous it only raises extra questions.