ODALLUS: THE DARK CALL

GAME INFO: Odallus: The Dark Call is a side-scrolling action/adventure game with minor role-playing game elements that mixes the gameplay of the early, linear Castlevania games with the non-linear Metroidvania style of exploration that requires backtracking and discovering objects that allow players to reach previously unavailable areas. Players control a former warrior named Haggis, who discovers his village aflame and his son missing while hunting in the woods. The game features aesthetics drawing from similarly themes games developed in the 1980s as well as horror visuals that resemble the artwork of H.R. Giger and Kentaro Miura.

SETTING: The game takes place in a mythical, pseudo-medieval dark fantasy setting with appropriate technology level in addition to supernatural aspects, particularly focusing on body horror and an antagonistic, inhuman civilization that predates humanity. Players traverse burning villages, forests, aqueducts, subterannean caverns, and mountain peaks, providing a wealth of landscapes in a relatively short video game.

FUNERARY IMAGERY: There is a small, disused graveyard in the first section of the Dark Forest, which is the second level available to players. Three heavily weathered headstones lie at the bottom of a cliff that leads to the second part of the level, from which emaciated red corpses continually emerge to assault the player. The headstones are upright and capsule shaped, although depicted in such a way that the ravages of time have clearly rendered the stones dilapidated, further demonstrated by clusters of stones resting at their base. The stones are colored in pale shades of turquoise, which not only keeps with the verdant color scheme of the Dark Forest but possibly suggests the creeping of moss over the surface of each stone. Moreover, they are found in front of a small ruined structure with large gaps in the brickwork that appears in the background, which is also overgrown with ivy.

ANALYSIS: The presence of a small graveyard area that is encountered early in the game bolsters the connection between Odallus: The Dark Call and its influences in Castlevania and Ghosts 'n Goblins as an easily recognizable visual citation. Unlike the graveyards found throughout those two series, this graveyard is distinctly not anachronistic despite the monuments' close resemblance to post-medieval gravestones. The graveyard's placement in disused ruins within the center of a hostile, overgrown forest implies that it existed long the current setting of the game, as well as possibly indicating a non-human graveyard that predates humanity itself. The enemies that emerge from the soil in front of each headstone are thin, spindly creatures that appear to be composed of reddened flesh entwined around the barest semblance of a humanoid frame, and lack facial distinctions that afford them any sense of humanity with the exception of gnashing teeth. Ultimately, the incorporation of a tiny graveyard area conceptually links Odallus: The Dark Call to the games that inspired its creation while integrating sufficiently into the game's narrative without appearing out-of-place.

Gallery

Graveyard in the first section of the Dark Forest


Headstone


Headstone