Trouble with indie games is that sometimes they fly in under the radar, lacking the country-sized marketing budgets of your Rockstars and your Naughty Dogs.
Take Howl. You could be forgiven for missing out on this one when it arrived on all major PC stores and consoles in January, given all the noise being made about The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Palworld.
But now you’ve got a chance to redeem yourself. After a couple of months on the big screen, Howl is now available for iOS and Android, too.
Here’s everything you need to know about one of the most innovative and acclaimed indie games of 2024.
Developed by Mi’pu’mi Games and published by Astragon Entertainment, Howl first made waves when it showed up in Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase last November.
Soon afterwards it landed on Switch, PS5, PC, and pretty much every platform imaginable—except mobile.
Howl is intriguingly described in its own blurb as a “tactical folktale”. In other words, it’s a tactical turn-based strategy game set in a dark fantasy world.
A devastating “howling plague” has swept the kingdom, transforming its victims into terrifying feral beasts whose sickening howls spread the pathogen like auditory wildfire. Nobody is immune—except you.
Playing as a deaf heroine, it’s your task to search for a cure while protecting uninfected villagers. Plus, you’ve got to keep yourself alive too—no mean feat in a world mostly populated by unhinged predators.
There are 60 stages in Howl, across four story chapters. You’re free to plot your route through this world, uncovering secret paths in the process.
Meanwhile, each of the game’s stages sees you attempting to reach the exit while either avoiding or killing the monsters that are in your way.
You get up to six moves per turn, some of which involve moving and some of which involve completing actions. At first, these actions are limited to blowing wolves back and firing arrows at them, but over time you’ll unlock many more.
For instance, you’ll eventually be able to play a Shadow Step, an Exploding Shot, a Vault, a Smoke Bomb, a Piercing Shot, and so on.
Naturally, these more powerful actions become increasingly necessary as you encounter more and more different types of monster. Some of the wolves you meet are small and swift, others are lumbering and powerful, and the rest are somewhere in between.
While your character’s deafness conveniently inoculates you against the howling plague, there’s nothing to stop the wolves from gobbling you up if they see you.
As long as you stay out of their line of sight, you’re safe, but as soon as a wolf claps eyes on you it moves one square in your direction for every action you take. This gives the game a puzzle-esque dynamic, with stages often demanding that you find a particular solution.
Howl’s gameplay is tight and challenging, but the game’s real USP is arguably its beautiful, living ink graphical style.
Your moves don’t just happen: they’re painted onto the screen, making the whole campaign feel like a story that you’re actively committing to parchment.
You can see Howl in action for free on mobile, with the base download containing enough gameplay to let you know what’s in store if you decide to fork out for the full version.
Grab Howl right now on the Google Play Store or the App Store.
