Awaria

Back in 2020, Łukasz “vanripper” Piskorz released Helltaker, a game that grabbed the internet’s attention and stole my heart (enough that I bought every official Nendoroid to show my support). Although Helltaker did receive an additional free chapter in celebration of its first anniversary, nothing else had come of it apart from a series of official webcomic pages. After a while, I wondered about the future of Helltaker and vanripper’s game dev career when I saw at random that he had released a brand-new free game, Awaria, three years in the making. Naturally, I downloaded it on Steam as fast as possible and, although different from his previous work and about less than an hour long, I enjoyed myself all the way through.

As a member of a tunnel maintenance crew, the Tunnel Dogs, you must repair shield generators that help repel ghosts, which will attack you during your duties alongside other safety hazards. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from kissing the ghosts after you’ve thwarted them and your boss may not be giving you the full story.

Like Helltaker, Awaria has a minimal story, though the presentation is my only real criticism of the game. The setting feels less defined, as you're not given much of an explanation for what the generators actually do and why repairing them is important (I could only guess that they power a ghost-repelling shield based on dialogue) or who the main character works for (I guessed the Tunnel Dogs based on the main menu). I also had to guess the main character's motivation for kissing ghosts as the story played out, but even then, I wasn't completely sure. Despite these issues, I found the narrative engaging, with distinct characters that have fun interactions and how other information about the world slowly fills itself in. The game’s depiction of lesbian romance also felt natural and not forced, as it’s clear that the maintenance workers and some of the ghosts have some prior history and there’s a focus on character first and foremost.

What sets Awaria apart, however, is its differing gameplay style. Rather than block puzzles, there’s more of an emphasis on time management. During the level, a generator will periodically fail. The player must collect the right parts from different machines to repair the generator. Certain parts machines may require parts of their own before the player can collect another copy of that part. If you repair a certain number of generators, you can move on to the next Chapter. Where it gets hectic is your limitations. You can’t see what parts you’ll need until you interact with the broken generator first, which makes anticipating the next part difficult. Since the player character only has two hands, you can only hold two parts and collecting a third one will replace the first. While dealing with collecting parts and repairing machines, you not only have a time limit on each repair (removed on Easy difficulty), but also dodge attacks from various ghosts. You have some leeway thanks to a drone that can prevent your death, but it must recharge between hits and higher difficulties increase the cooldown or outright remove the drone, removing some margin of error in your playstyle and encouraging urgency.

What you eventually deal with. It gets harder.

Although the player juggles a number of mechanics, it does a great job at layering in complexity as the thirteen Chapters progress rather than frontloading too much information. However, I did still find the final stretch more noticeably difficult, especially the first phase of the final boss, even on Easy difficulty. I feel like I could do better on higher difficulties, but the fact that the bulk of the unlockable art book and babeczki recipe require beating Chapters on Hard makes me feel more compelled to instead pay the $10 for the material instead.

Much like Helltaker, Awaria uses a limited color palette outside of the individual machines and their parts, likely a result of vanripper’s partial colorblindness, but the contrast between green and purple is both visually appealing and helps the player discern between themselves and the ghosts at a glance. The in-game sprites have a different style, but are no less charming and vanripper’s art in the cutscenes remains immaculate. Despite their complete green coloration, the girls all look visually distinct both in and out of gameplay, which shows the developer’s strength in effective character design. That said, you can still almost lose track of everything going on when it turns into a bullet hell, mainly in the first phase of the final boss.

vanripper has a very appealing art style.

Not only does Awaria also have good sound design, but Mittsies knocks it out of the park again with the music. Even if it’s not immediately catchy, it does a great job at setting the tone and I would certainly find myself listening to the music again out of context due to how well it stands out from other video game scores in recent memory.

Awaria shows that vanripper not only learned from his experience with Helltaker, such as more replay value, but has a willingness to try something new and more complex without sacrificing his unique charm. Really, there’s no reason not to check out Awaria, especially considering that it’s free.