Video Game Review: ITTA

ITTA

Glass Revolver

Bullet-Hell/Boss-Rush

Nintendo Switch

ITTA is a pixel-art bullet-hell boss-rush game with a decent amount of exploration and gorgeously rendered environments. Looking back at that description I realize it’s a bit of a jargon jumble, so to put it another way I’d say it’s kind of like Furi by way of Hyper Light Drifter. Understand, dear reader, that I say this as a very high compliment, as both of those titles number among my favorite games of all time. ITTA does not quite hit that level of love for me, unfortunately, but it is still something very special.

When the game starts the protagonist and namesake, a young girl named Itta, wakes up to the sight of her brother, father, and cat’s mangled bodies. Her mother is missing from this scene, and then a spirit shows up claiming they were summoned by the wishes of her Itta’s loved ones to protect her. She is granted a spiritual weapon crafted from her father’s revolver, the spirit takes the appearance of her cat, and she leaves to look for her mother and figure out what’s going on.

The world you explore starting at that point is referred to at various points as “garden” and “interstice”, and there are other beings around for Itta to talk to. She is told that she may be able to return to her home from this limbo of sorts if she manages to kill enough of the corrupted spirits that have been sealed away to activate something called The Voidgate, and so she sets about doing just that. There’s more to the story than that, and honestly, I didn’t do even the parts I did summarize justice, but suffice to say I found the narrative and the worldbuilding to be deeply compelling despite – or rather, because of – their relative simplicity. The game gives the player just enough to spark intrigue and speculation but not so much that it lays everything out perfectly clearly, and when done well I love that in a story. There aren’t a whole lot of conversations to be had and none of them are especially long, but the writers made very effective use of what is there. The characterization of The Interstitial Garden’s other inhabitants, in particular, is quite impressive, as the game manages to convey a strong sense of personality and in some cases developmental arc through minimal interaction.

In addition to the strong sense of world in the narrative sense, The Interstitial Garden is a wondrous setting in the visual sense as well. The pixel art backgrounds are skillfully detailed and you can tell that a lot of care went into crafting them, and the environmental design is just alien enough to be both calming and vaguely unsettling. I occasionally found myself stopping to just enjoy the view for a moment, something which the game actually encouraged in one interaction, and rather than being at odds with the dark tone of the game it worked in tandem with it to strong thematic effect. The music when outside of battle adds to this effect as well, as it is relaxing in a melancholy sort of way – for the most part. A couple of the tracks I thought felt a little too cheery for what the game is, but even those weren’t bad songs. When in fights the music was hectic in an appropriate way, though the sound mixing would get a little wonky sometimes, especially whenever I died.

As far as gameplay is concerned, ITTA is good but nothing outstanding or particularly original. There are a variety of weapons that can be found to expand Itta’s arsenal from her father’s pistol, a sort of berserker-power, and a dodge roll to help avoid a boss’ bullets. It all works well, but I also feel like I’ve seen it all before, and honestly, I’ve seen it done better. The boss’s bullet patterns are never unfairly hard, but they do sometimes get hectic in a way that doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to it, and that makes it harder to feel like you’re dodging things by any skill of your own. Even in Enter the Gungeon where many of the fights are randomized all of the enemies at least have easily recognizable patterns that you have to adapt to depending on what else may or may not be around. In ITTA there were times where it was too random, though again I want to stress that it was never impossibly hard because of that. In fact, by the end, the game became a bit too easy because I had a weapon that let me just spray and pray until any given fight was over.

There were a couple of other issues, such as the general lack of impact feeling for both player and enemy as well as the time when I beat a boss at the exact moment it killed me and the game crashed because it couldn’t resolve that outcome, but despite my quibbles, I very much enjoyed my time with ITTA.  It is a lovingly and competently-crafted experience that never loses its focus and doesn’t have time to overstay its welcome, and I’ve been thinking about the story all day. Fans of bullet-hell style games shouldn’t miss out on this one, and anyone who’s been curious but intimidated by the genre may just find this to be a good entry point.