Indie adventure platformer Owlboy leaves its nest, scheduled for fall release

Owlboy, a D-Pad Studio 8-bit platformer that’s been in the works since 2008, is to be released on Steam this fall. To celebrate, the developer has released a new trailer.

You might not have heard of Owlboy, a 2D platformer by D-Pad, and it would come as no surprise. After all, the game – telling a story of a boy who, you guessed it, turned into an owl, fulfilling his Birdy-ish dreams – was first announced in 2008 (to put it into perspective – that’s around the time Braid was making its debut), so nobody should bat an eye if you started mourning it already, right? Wrong, for Owlboy has risen from the (apparently) dead – its Steam page ready, its 8-year development turned into a feature, and its journey setting out with a trailer you can watch below:

And now the question emerges – why did it take the devs so long to deliver? Apart from the wonted “thorough polishing procedure,” it turns out that from the very beginning Owlboy was the apple of D-Pad’s eye, which could be appropriately taken care of only after the devs have dealt with frying slightly less important fish, like Savant: Ascent. As they explained:

Owlboy has been in production for nearly 10 years, starting as a hobby project. Shortly thereafter, we quit our jobs to focus on the game full-time. After we released Owlboy’s first demo in 2011, we decided to redesign the core mechanics and put more work into ensuring that the game was worth the wait. (Source: Kotaku)

That’s quite some time to perform an indie-incubation, isn’t it? Let’s just hope Owlboy’s hatching won’t bring another ugly duckling to the gaming world.

Meanwhile, if you’re planning on hanging around PAX West this September, don’t forget to stop in at D-Pad Studio’s booth, where a proper release date will be unveiled.