Video Game / Eagle Island

Eagle Island is a Metroidvania-inspired platform game featuring RPG-esque elements and procedural level generation. It was developed by Nick Gregory.

The story follows Quill and his owl Koji as they set out on an adventure to rescue Ichiro, Koji's brother, from the clutches of Armaura the gargantuan eagle deity. On their way they must also rescue the Totems – Magira, Icora and Zephara – before they too end up in her grasp, as tasked by Dr. Oliver Ornis. But as it seems, there might be more to it than a simple rescue adventure...

In this game the player takes control of Quill, one of the protagonists in the game. The player's job is to vanquish the enemies by casting Koji off into them, collect various treasures to help him along and advance up until the level's boss. There are 9 different areas available for exploration.

The game was crowdfunded in a Kickstarter campaign, raising a little over £25000 with 1291 backers.

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Eagle Island provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: Firedancers, in addition to divebombing the player, explode upon contact with any surface or entity (the player or other monsters) when attacking. They also automatically explode if they come in contact with lava.
• And I Must Scream: Dr. Ornis's final fate, frozen in ice within the same place Armaura was sealed in.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted for Quill; while he features many different poses for just one direction, he actually has double that amount due to the other direction being more or less redrawn in an effort to keep Quill's falconry glove sitting on his right arm regardless of which direction he's facing.
• Backtracking: Depending on the generated level and how the player plays, backtracking may be necessary to find chests and/or enter unexplored parts of the map.
• Bears Are Bad News: The bear-like enemies that were present in the pre-alpha demo alongside the moths, mushrooms and plants attack the player with spikes rising from the ground when in range.
• Big Bad: Armaura serves as the antagonist who kidnaps Ichiro and plans to capture the Totems. The true villain, Dr. Oliver Ornis, manipulates Quill in order to steal the Totems for himself.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ornis is stopped and sealed away, but not before killing Armaura and Koji. Thankfully, Koji is brought back to life by the freed Totems, but ends up becoming the new protector to succeed Armaura and as a result has to leave Ichiro and Quill to guard the island.
• Boss Subtitles: Every boss except Armaura and Dr. Ornis features its name and a short description of what it is.

PREHISTORIC FLORA
Veneblossom
INCENDIARY INVERTEBRATE
Scorchion
COASTAL CARNIVORE
Scaleback
SUBTERRANEAN SERPENT
Nagaka
AMPHIBIOUS SKYBEAST
Amphidra
FROZEN WYVERNS
Geminice
LONG-TONGUED LIZARD
Linguana
FLESH-EATING FLOWER
Arbuscuto
ENTOMBED SORCERER
Avarbrazam
THE BEHEMOTH BELOW
Tarancura Miseros

• Bottomless Pit Rescue Service: Falling into a chasm causes Koji to fly in and grab Quill, bringing him back to the nearest patch of solid ground.
• Cooldown: If Koji misses or hits a wall, a hazard (such as a projectile or lava) or an enemy in a spot where they’re invulnerable, Quill gets a short cooldown that prevents him from casting Koji off again until it wears off. It can be shortened with certain runes.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Shortly after defeating Armaura, Oliver Ornis takes center stage as the real villain and kidnaps the "captured" Totems – as well as Quill’s faithful owl Koji.
• Evil All Along: Dr. Oliver Ornis, who appears friendly at first but then manipulates Quill in order to kill Armaura and capture the Totems for himself.
• Feathered Fiend: Armaura, the big eagle deity, introduces herself by kidnapping one of your owls and is thus established as the story's villain. At first anyway; she was trying to save him.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Magira, Icora and Zephara, respectively command the element of fire, water (which becomes ice) and wind (which becomes lightning).
• Flip-Screen Scrolling: Every room counts as a single "screen" (although it still allows for scrolling if said screen doesn't fit the window/monitor size) and as such, barring the split-second transition, the camera won't display two or more rooms at once.
• Giant Flyer: Armaura is depicted as a very large eagle. The Totems also count, being large birds too.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • A practically literal example; the Pyromander enemy throws dynamites at you as an attack, but if one of them is anywhere near its crate at the time of exploding, it will detonate with a large blast radius - potentially taking other enemies in the vicinity with it (including other Pyromanders, providing an opportunity for a chain reaction).
  • Avabrazam can conjure a big fiery circle that follows the player character. Through clever manouvering and good timing, the circle can be tricked into exploding right onto the boss and deal extra damage. This is necessary for the "Stop Hitting Yourself" achievement.
• Hub Level: The 9 areas of the island are connected by a singular level. The areas are as follows (from first to last):
  • The Lost Woods: Greenwood Glade, where the first level takes place, is a forest.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Gemshine Mines are located in the desert, although it's not very populated by your typical desert level baddies (aside from Flaktus, Blazebugs and Scorchion) and features mineshafts instead of your typical pyramids or temples, complete with minecart sections.
  • Palmtree Panic: Smuggleaway Bay, which is a coastal area.
  • Green Hill Zone: Woodberry Warren, an idyllic meadow that also features caves.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: Sanctuary Swamp is a swampy area.
  • Death Mountain: Pinnacle Peak, which is a mountain full of danger and also a Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
  • Jungle Japes: Hollow Hestia is a place deep within the jungle, occasionally populated by spike traps.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Falcon's Furnace, which is situated deep within Eagle Island, is a hot cavern where lava replaces what would've been water.
  • Ancient Tomb: The Tomb of the Raven, as the name indicates, is a tomb hosting a variety of dark, even ghostly nasties.
• Inescapable Ambush: Some rooms with enemies inside will have all exits blocked off by gates, which can only be reopened by defeating said enemies.
• Interface Screw: Entering a room full of spores or being hit by Psilofume's attack causes the screen and music to distort, making it more difficult to navigate.
• Ironic Echo: One of the rooms beneath the glade area features broken chains where Armaura was once held by humans before breaking free. After the third act, Oliver Ornis gets permanently frozen right in the middle of these chains, essentially taking Armaura’s place as the one being imprisoned.
• Item-Drop Mechanic:
  • Enemies will drop golden seeds and silver coins when killed, along with Manaroc and red heart gems (which fill the elemental attack slot bar and your health, respectively) when successful combos are performed.
  • In the pre-alpha demo, there are caches that can be found in walls (denoted by a subtle discoloration) which will drop either seeds, blue gems or red gems at random when struck (unless you use the elemental feathers, which will dictate the drop depending on which one is used).
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: Armaura swoops down from the sky and snatches Ichiro at the beginning of the game. She later does the same with the Totems.
• Kill It with Ice:
  • Icora’s Feather allows the player to freeze or chill enemies. Freezing enemies that are airborne or on the ceiling causes them to fall down and shatter to pieces.
  • Geminice is a boss (or two bosses rather) that will try to freeze Quill with a blue fire breath attack.
• Loading Screen: When a level is initially loaded, the player is placed in the starting room and needs to wait until the whole level is generated. In the meantime, the player can freely move about in the room until the level generates and the gate leading to it opens.
• Locked Door: From the beginning of the game, levels have doors that do not automatically open and instead require unlocking on the player's part, namely ones that require you to defeat a certain amount of enemies. Starting from Smuggleaway Bay, levels will also begin to generate other types; some doors are combo-powered (i.e. you must strike designated objects to open them), some are guarded, and others are your classic doors that require a key obtained from an enemy.
• Money Multiplier: The Treasure Hunter rune that can be found allows the player to get more golden seeds from chests. The Bully rune also allows extra golden seeds to drop from enemies when struck.
• Multi-Platform: Available for the Windows, Mac and Linux systems as well as Nintendo Switch.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Quill has Koji, an owl who accompanies him on his adventure.
• One-Hit Polykill: Zephara's feather allows Koji to go through any and all enemies he hits without stopping until he reaches a solid object or the end of his casting range. There's also a rune that allows Koji to do this without requiring Zephara's feather.
• Power-Up Magnet: The Satchel rune allows Koji to gather pickups without requiring the player to move Quill over to them. The aptly named “Magnet“ rune does a similar thing, wherein the pickups instantly fly towards Quill when in range.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Each playthrough has randomly generated terrain, monsters, treasures and map layout; no two levels are the same.
• Retraux: The game features pixel art reminiscent of the classic 16-bit era.
• Rodents of Unusual Size: Rattits and Lobrats are giant rat enemies that leap at the player when in range.
• Rule of Three:
  • Moletrio, Moleder and Molesplosion all come in groups consisting of three mole enemies, with each one colored a little differently.
  • In the pre-alpha demo, every multiple of three in a kill combo earns a health gem. This gets changed in the full game where it takes four instead of three under core rules.
  • In the Challenge mode of the pre-alpha demo, the generated level consists of 3 parts and each ends with a miniboss room. The final miniboss room also has 3 miniboss enemies to contend with at once.
  • The main story consists of 3 acts.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: At the beginning of the game, the player is tasked with rescuing the three Totems by completing Greenwood Glade, Gemshine Mines and Smuggleaway Bay before Armaura gets to them. Unfortunately, she comes and takes them just as the player arrives. Gets exaggerated later in the game as not only was Armaura actually rescuing the Totems, Oliver Ornis was the one planning to kidnap them the whole time!
• Spikes of Doom:
  • Pinnacle Peak spawns these in form of dense clusters of sharp icicles protruding from the ground that will hurt the player as well as enemies.
  • Hollow Hestia is littered with spike traps that are activated by either standing on them or striking them with the owl. Except for the Lost, enemies won’t activate these traps when walking or standing right on top of them.
• Stuff Blowing Up:
  • Magira's Feather and its associated moves allow Koji to cause an explosion that may kill multiple enemies packed close together.
  • Pyromander's attack is throwing dynamites at the player which explode after a short time.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Quill can remain underwater for an indefinite amount of time without any risk of drowning.
• The Three Trials: The plot of the first act concerns rescuing (or at least reaching) the ancient three Totems before taking on Armaura.
• True Final Boss: Tarancura Miseros, who can only be fought after collecting all 19 Ancient Coins and reaching the Lair - the last level in Story Mode consisting of all 9 biomes.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Of all the things a player can do while playing, one of them is to repeatedly cast Koji off into a solid wall, ground, ceiling, or lava (which makes him emit a high-pitched sound on contact, and it also happens when hitting hazards such as spikes). Note that Koji doesn't seem to suffer any damage.
• Whack-a-Monster:
  • Moletrio, Moleder and Molesplosion enemies burrow into the ground and momentarily jump out to throw a rock at the player before burrowing again.
  • Ferrettacks drill out of the ground and throw a stone both left and right before snickering and burrowing back in, providing a short window of time for the player to strike.
  • Lost Tunneler, one of the several variations of Lost (skull imp enemies that served as minibosses in the pre-alpha demo), can burrow underground and jump back out shortly after, sending a few rocks flying as well. Lost Diver does a similar thing, but dives into lava instead.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Averted by Oliver Ornis after he gets enough of Quill in his bossfight. He actually takes out a gun and tries to shoot Quill right then and there, only for Koji to take the bullet instead.
• A Winner Is You: In the pre-alpha demo, reaching the final room just past the miniboss room will reward you with the Kickstarter logo, two lines of dialogue and a link to the campaign on a black background (and invisible terrain).
• Would Hurt a Child: Oliver Ornis shows no qualms against killing Quill despite the latter being a kid.