REVIEW – Monster Theater’s game wants to be both a punishing 2D platformer and a roguelike, while its surprisingly strong audiovisual style constantly points back toward old-school classics. Tested on Nintendo Switch 2, Atomic Owl has enough personality in its futuristic synthwave Japan, talking sword, and shinobi owl to stand out from an increasingly crowded genre. A closer look, however, reveals that some of the energy spent on presentation is missing from its roguelike systems, leaving only one half of this genre mixture firmly on its feet.

There are now so many roguelike platformers that we may soon need a roguelike just to decide which roguelike to play. At least Atomic Owl does not enter that crowd empty-handed. Monster Theater has created a visually striking, retro-inspired 2D action platformer that makes its love for the 8-bit and 16-bit eras clear from the opening moments. Pixel art, neon lighting, and a synthwave soundtrack combine to give it far more personality than its first few minutes might suggest.

The problem is that the game occasionally pays too much attention to its appearance. The gameplay is not bad: Hidalgo moves quickly, controls respond well, and the platforming is usually precise. Instead, it feels as though the developers invested so much energy into the world, style, and atmosphere that less room remained for genuinely meaningful mechanical variety.

Hidalgo, Hop!

The futuristic, synthwave-soaked Japan stars Hidalgo, a shinobi owl who befriends a talking sword during his journey. The weapon floats beside him, offers advice, and inevitably creates a little déjà vu for anyone who remembers the similar pairing in Transistor. The idea still works, though, and Hidalgo has enough personality to avoid feeling like an ordinary ninja who received feathers and a sword at the last moment.

His movement set includes nearly every familiar platforming tool. There is a double jump, upward flight, wall jumping, and sprinting, making Hidalgo far more mobile than Ryu Hayabusa ever was in the old Ninja Gaiden games. Levels gradually demand more from these abilities, introducing new dangers, traps, and mechanics after a relatively simple beginning.

The arsenal also appears varied at first. Hidalgo can use a slow, oversized sword, a faster smaller blade, a chain whip, and a throwable hammer, all available early against the tengu. On paper, this sounds like the foundation of a combat system that will keep expanding. In practice, the repertoire barely grows throughout the adventure. Most of what we see near the beginning remains what we use later, so weapon choice feels less like a progression system and more like an early selection that never develops very far.

That may not have been the developers’ main priority. Atomic Owl places much greater emphasis on atmosphere, voiced scenes, and world-building, all supported by a surprisingly good soundtrack. Audiovisually, it clearly speaks to players who have been gaming for thirty or thirty-five years and still remember what it was like to sit in front of an NES game while imagination filled in everything the hardware could not show.

The levels are large and slowly introduce new dangers, but the camera sits too far away from the protagonist. Up close, the visuals could resemble a beautiful NES game or a detailed Game Boy conversion, yet the distant perspective makes larger areas feel extremely empty, especially near the beginning. Later sections fill the spaces with more enemies and hazards, so the opening levels should not define the entire experience, but the early emptiness remains difficult to ignore.

The real problem is not the camera, though. It is the roguelike component. The developers clearly want players to choose this mode over traditional checkpoint-based platforming, yet almost all meaningful randomness is missing. Restart a stage and the same locations, enemies, and challenges return. Upgrades may appear elsewhere, but that alone is not enough to make each new run feel genuinely new.

Atomic Owl can therefore be called a roguelike about as convincingly as a random state broadcaster can be called an entirely trustworthy source of information. The roguelike concept feels unfinished, almost placed on top of the platformer because the label itself promises replayability. Had Monster Theater explored the idea more deeply, the game could have built a much stronger identity. In its current form, the mode feels like a partially completed experiment.

Boredlike

This is the main reason the score falls, not the technical state of the Nintendo Switch 2 version. There are no serious performance or visual problems with the port, the game runs steadily, and the controls respond properly. The issue lies in the way content is structured, especially the fact that optional challenge rooms can only be completed once.

Those rooms are entertaining too. They demand more attention, sharper movement, and better reactions, meaning they could easily have become content worth revisiting again and again. Instead, players clear them once and remove them from the list, which feels especially strange in a game that keeps emphasising its roguelike identity.

A roguelike works when each restart contains uncertainty, tension, or curiosity. Atomic Owl offers only minimal differences, including purchasable stats, upgrades appearing elsewhere, and altered health bars. Those changes are not enough. On Nintendo Switch 2, where the genre already contains many strong competitors, the lack of variety becomes even harder to excuse.

The audiovisual work strongly suggests a passion project. The developers clearly love this world, understand older games, and spent considerable effort giving Judanest’s neon-lit futuristic setting its own personality. That passion cannot save the roguelike mode, however. In its current form, the mode is forgettable and fails to provide enough reason to revisit the same stages.

As a platformer, the situation improves dramatically. The classic atmosphere works, movement feels good, and the game does not demand the same infuriating level of perfection associated with the hardest sections of old Rayman titles. Judged only as a traditional platformer, Atomic Owl is entirely respectable and even easy to recommend as a short playthrough.

The problem is how quickly it ends. The story can be completed in around two hours, which is unusually brief even for a smaller indie platformer. Seeing everything, completing challenges, and exploring more thoroughly still does not push the total much beyond ten hours. Once again, the same conclusion returns: there is too little content, and the roguelike mode does not extend it effectively.

It Falls Between Two Stools

Enemies are generally predictable, and after a while we know exactly when they attack, where they appear, and how to defeat them with minimal effort. That would not be a major issue in a traditional platformer, but the roguelike design makes it far more important for repeat runs to create new situations. Since that does not happen, there is little reason to return after finishing the game.

Atomic Owl’s greatest problem is that it attempts to develop two modes that are only loosely connected, and succeeds with only one of them. The traditional platforming sections have rhythm, atmosphere, and identity, while the roguelike layer adds too little. Instead, it weakens the overall structure by continually promising replay value that it ultimately cannot provide.

Monster Theater would have been better off focusing entirely on the platformer side. This world, music, movement, and visual direction could have produced something closer to The Messenger or Cyber Shadow. Both games are stylistically close to Atomic Owl, but they understand their intended experience far more consistently.

The difficulty is that both of those games appeared years ago and can now often be purchased for very little, even if neither has a native Nintendo Switch 2 version. Atomic Owl can defend itself through style and atmosphere, but content, depth, and replayability leave it in a much weaker position. It is respectable and likeable as a platformer, disappointing as a roguelike, and the combination never brings out the best in either side.

-V-

Developer: Monster Theater
Publisher: Eastasiasoft
Genre: 2D platformer, roguelike
Release date: July 31, 2025 (PC), May 20, 2026 (Nintendo Switch 2)