Game EXP: Onion Assault (NS)

Onion Assault

Systems: Nintendo Switch & Steam

Release Date: January 27, 2023

Publisher: Hörberg Productions

Developer: Hörberg Productions

Time Spent: 5 hours, 26 minutes

Onion Assault was a fun game in the purest sense of the phrase.  It is a platforming game where you control one of two characters (who play identically) with the primary mechanic being similar to Super Mario Bros. 2 where you can stand on and pick up (nearly) any enemy in the game to use them as projectiles against other enemies.  There are exceptions like the spiny snake or one of the larger inverted turrets that you cannot pick up.  But the tank, you can pick that up.  And throw it.  You can also grab the shell fired from the tank after you throw it to then throw it back at the tank.  Onion Assault feels like it was designed to be fun, and it is just that.

The story in the game is about as minimal as you can get.  You play as either Pelle Lök or  Mama Lök whose home/onion farm in Onionia is overrun by the evil Imperial red army and you fight back against the invaders using everything at your disposal.  There is no text or dialogue in the game so even the name of Onionia was taken from the track list of the soundtrack (more on the music in a bit), but there does not really need to be exposition as you traverse through the four stages of each of the four worlds/settings.  Each stage slightly builds on core mechanics like timing jumps around enemies, and hitting switches on the fly, while the game gets progressively gets more and more difficult without feeling unfair, as a well-designed video game is supposed to do.

There are a couple of changes to established video game construction from what I can tell, but they work.  Like many platformers, there are coins/bars to collect, but unlike the standard 100 coins = free life, here you only need 50, but coins and lives are not as plentiful as in Super Mario World, so having that quota of 50 is really nice.  And while you do have lives that will eventually run out after dying too many times (semi-frequently), thankfully the primary purpose of lives is to be able to restart from mid-level checkpoints after dying.  Once you use your last life, you have to start the stage over from the beginning with three lives, which creates some incentive to not be wasteful with your lives.  But as is the case with well-thought-out level design, a lot of the stages feel challenging at first, especially getting to that first checkpoint, but on subsequent run-throughs, either because of dying or collecting the large coins, the jumping and timing feel second nature and those once hard areas become a literal breeze to pass through.

In addition to the gold bars/coins, there are the extra large coins in the game that are, more often than not, tucked away in a place that might be difficult to reach or access or in some cases rewarded for defeating a particular enemy or killing a group of enemies in a specific manner; playing through a level more than once was sometimes required.  For whatever reason, after I had left two uncollected coins in two different stages, I decided that I would be playing as Pelle Lök to beat the stage, and any missing large coins would be collected using the Mama Lök character.  Again, since there was no discernable mechanical difference between the two characters, this was done purely for roleplaying purposes.  There was one large coin that I was unable to collect, so at least at the moment, I am not sure if anything special happens when you collect all the large coins from each stage, but they could just be there for challenge purposes.

The music!  The music was composed by Bertil Horberg's brother, Arne, who has also composed the music for previous games from Horberg Productions and the quality of music continues here as well.  Although none of the themes come across as particularly oniony, all of the themes are appropriately upbeat and bouncy.  Croquetto Castle however does have a rather ominous feel to it, but that could also be because I died a lot I love that not only the enemies walk in time to the music, but a lot of the background elements like trees, bushes, clouds, and sometimes floating bits of candy, all move in time with the music in a way that does not come across as visually distracting.  

I will be posting a MIDI Week Single article on Wednesday featuring one of the songs from the game, so stay tuned for that.

I would be surprised if there are not already people complaining about the length of the game being only 16 stages long and beaten in only a few hours.  I counter that the game is the perfect length because there is no fluff, and levels feel comfortably paced although tougher levels will sometimes feel longer because they are more difficult to plow through.  Going into the battle with the final boss, I was happy to see a recurring theme from the Gunman Clive games but also thankful that there was not more than one form or stage that the boss took; being one of my problems with completing Mechstermination Force.

If you like the mechanic from Super Mario Bros. 2 where you can pick up enemies or pick items up from the ground and use them as projectiles, there is a very good chance that you will enjoy Onion Assault.  I cannot definitively comment on the replayability of the game as I feel like I still need to collect that one last large coin just to see if it unlocks anything apart from bragging rights.  And even though there is no timer counting down in each stage (thankfully), this would probably be a great game for those in the speedrunning community.  But yeah, Onion Assault was a blast to play from minimal start to satisfying end.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Fought the World Today