Key Fairy Review

I haven’t stopped thinking about Key Fairy since I swung by Brisbane-based studio Owl Machine’s booth at PAX Aus last year. I had covered the pacifist bullet-hell game before, but I talked about it ad nauseam for the rest of the weekend after demoing it on the show floor. But anticipation is a fickle thing, and as the release date crept closer, I began to wonder if the destination would be able to meet the heights of the journey. After hitting credits and immediately jumping back in to further explore this black-and-white world, I’m questioning why I was ever worried, because Key Fairy didn’t just match my high expectations, it far exceeded them.

As the titular Key Fairy, you arrive at an overgrown grove covered with thickets and vines that has been besieged by a deep-rooted corruption. Pirouetting through the plant life, this light little sprite seeks to bring harmony and calm back to the area through movement, conversation, and no small amount of persistence.

This benevolent task is directly reflected in the moment-to-moment gameplay, which technically falls into the bullet-hell genre, despite lacking a single bullet. As mentioned, Key Fairy takes a pacifist swing at the genre, choosing to focus on positioning and pinpoint movement instead of firing a volley of projectiles back at your enemies. Even the term ‘enemy’ doesn’t fit here, as your temporary adversaries are victims of the corruption, and their aggression towards you is nothing more than a product of their affliction.

They’re great guys, I promise

Instead of facing violence with violence, you’ll utilise a grappling hook and a dash to manoeuvre around attacks and collect stars left behind by your soon-to-be friend. Collecting enough stars will quell their anger and bring them peace, allowing you to spark up a conversation and patch up the situation. The Fairy’s base movement speed is slow, but through the use of the grapple and dash, you’ll be flinging yourself through each screen with grace and velocity.

Opting to strip out any form of attack is a bold move that requires movement to be airtight and satisfying, and Key Fairy more than steps up to that challenge. The twin-stick control scheme is simple to learn, yet wonderfully difficult to master. Launching yourself from one side of the screen to the other, collecting a star, then dashing back the other way to avoid an attack feels just as excellent to pull off as it looks, and it’s a feeling that’s present in every encounter.

Keeping those encounters interesting for the duration of the game’s three-to-four-hour runtime is a roster of quirky and creative NPCs with varying attack patterns and strategies. Spear-throwing knights, knife-wielding gnomes, and thorn-covered bushes all require a tailored approach, which inevitably changes as they are mixed and matched together as the game stretches on.

The use of the extremely limited colour palette is masterful 

Outside of a few moments where environmental hazards skewed the balance slightly, I was consistently thrilled with the challenges I uncovered in each new room, many of which required several attempts to overcome. Many more attempts were needed for Key Fairy’s handful of fantastically well-designed boss encounters. These multi-stage fights are a near-perfect mix of escalating difficulty and audio-visual intensity. The first major boss is a floating crown that handed me my own arse a dozen times, but I never felt cheated; instead, I used the repeated failures to learn its patterns and formulate a plan. A plan that eventually worked. I can’t and won’t spoil the game’s final encounter, but on both a gameplay and presentation level, it was one of my favourite boss fights in recent history. Truly, it’s something special.

Once pacified, these confused souls will engage in conversation with you, or they’ll try at least. Many are brief, but these little dialogues range from endearingly odd, like grunting back and forth with a gnome, to whimsical and even melancholic. This world is beautiful, but sick, and the denizens often show remorse for their initial actions. Beginning as a light-hearted affair, the vague but valuable story slowly deepens into a tale of self-discovery and bravery in the face of adversity. I won’t claim to understand the ins and outs of Key Fairy’s lore, but I can say with certainty that this world and its creatures and critters really made me feel.

As you twist, turn, and chat about the place, you’ll also make good on the key part of Key Fairy. A network of interconnected rooms makes up the map, with many areas locked off behind doors and gates that require keys and other items to unlock. Characters will often hint towards or outright tell you where to go, or what to do, but it can be easy to find yourself swinging in circles. The map itself is relatively small, and you’ll find your way eventually, but a map certainly wouldn’t go astray, even if it was unlocked after hitting credits, so you can find the collectables you missed.

Each room tells a vague and haunting story

Gliding through glades and castles isn’t just mechanically satisfying; it’s also stunningly beautiful. The default black-and-white visual style makes the charming hand-drawn characters and environments even more striking, and the eclectic soundtrack ties everything together. Every frame is filled to the brim with character and life, so much so that discovering a new biome or NPC was a reward in itself when progressing. The monochromatic visuals will be what catches your eye at first, but the music really does deserve a solo mention. Choruses of strings and percussion are mixed with distant howls, synthetic melodies, and natural noise. It’s a cacophony that could be mistaken for a mess if taken out of context, but supporting the other aspects of Key Fairy, it’s perfection. How Owl Machine managed to make this world eerie, cute, foreboding, and quaint all at once, by hand, is a miracle.

Final Thoughts

I said in my initial preview for Key Fairy that I was left baffled when its gameplay managed to live up to its presentation. Now, having played and finished the final product, I’m left baffled once again by the level of creativity on display from the first moment to the last. The audio-visual presentation is the front-facing draw, but Key Fairy’s tight controls and fantastically designed encounters bring depth to the experience. Easily one of my favourite games I’ve played in a hot minute, unique doesn’t even begin to describe how one-of-a-kind this title truly is.

Reviewed on Steam Deck // Review code supplied by publisher

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