On a regular basis I bless the indie developer community for continuing to make games in this generation as weird as they want to. No longer constrained simply by what may make sense, or what mainstream audiences will all come running for, they can simply come up with odd concepts and then find some at least modest success if it works. In many regards I’d say Aureole feels a bit like a poster child for this sentiment, mixing together an oddball story involving angels, demons, and ultimately making use of what looks like a halo to engage in action-oriented speedrunning while rolling around. Does it make much sense? Not at all. But can you have a good time with it? Maybe, if you don’t mind the focus of the gameplay being decidedly narrow.

I absolutely respect the developers for creating such an odd story to compliment the action, since honestly you could have just made this a speedrunning game without a need for explanation, but I could see people going either way on it. It’s kind of odd, with you essentially taking charge of the slacker angel Ramila, working to try to turn the tide on a sudden demonic invasion. Weirdly enough, the key to doing this is to essentially take control of a halo, working through obstacle-filled courses, first simply surviving but then trying to get the best times possible.

Thankfully, there’s a decent amount of technique, the controls are generally responsive, and each stage has its own sense of flow. The first time you dash through you may be able to do a respectable job, but especially as you get further along you’ll tend to see opportunities for how to attack the courses differently, giving you an incentive to return to improve your time if you feel so inclined. I will say that the overworld initially threw me off a bit, as I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go, but that may have just been me.

The biggest limiting factor here though is that this is delivering a very specific style of action, and if you’re not drawn in by a desire to do your best to speedrun a bunch of stages there may be very little appeal. I did enjoy the quirky story, and generally how well the stages tended to play, but nothing here screams mainstream appeal by any means either. If you’re looking for something a little offbeat that offers a challenge it may be a good option though.