"Hawwa: the Forgotten" is pretty well named imo because i have never heard anyone talk about it. recently i was cleaning out my family's storage unit and i found my PSP along with a few games like Little Big Planet, Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles and of course Hawwa. i played it and i remembered how much i loved it as a kid. i also remembered that i was never able to talk to anyone about it. i went online to see if theres a reddit or discord about it so i can finally gush and connect with others. i spent WEEKS trying to find anything but got nothing. as far as i have seen, there is no images or gameplay of this game anywhere online(yes, i did google it). I dont get it, because its a good game. Maybe its because it was rated M and its one of the few metroidvanias on the platform. there might not have been an audience for it. I played it a lot as a kid but its pretty hard, so i never got super far into it.
so i made the decision: i am making this website to collect anything and everything i can about this game. i want to archive any images, gameplay, promotional materials, ANYTHING.
if you know anything about this game, have content or if youve heard of it, please reach out to hawwaarchive@gmail.com
hawwa is about Ave Maria, a Gundog (like a Devil Hunter) exploring an underground maze looking for her master who has gone missing after his attempt to explore this place. once you enter however you fall along way and the entrance seals, leaving you with no choice but to decend further. the maze becomes darker and enemies more horrifying the deeper you go
the gameplay is like a stylish hack n slash (think DMC3) mixed with a metroidvania (SotN). it also has some souls-like elements (which is crazy because it was released in like 2009-2011).
game is layed out in a 2.5D perspective, characters and enemies are 2d animated sprites and back grounds and platforms are 3d rendered. combat starts off with your sword. you have a light attack, a heavy, a counter and a manuver. the counter is kinda like a parry when well timed and a guard if not but it can do some crazy things on the other weapons. the manuver is is like a dodge roll with the sword. you also have a dedicated heal button that uses one flask to recover damage (you start off with just one in normal difficulty and two on easy).
the Drive system is this games answer to the Style System in dmc but instead of A, B, C etc. its bronze, silver, gold, and i think platinum(i only got it once as a kid). the higher your rank the more gems you get,these gems can then be used at the gene rooms in exchange for combos, upgrades and level ups. (i had no idea what i was doing with the upgrades or leveling back then but i think if you were super sweaty you could min-max the hell out of this game.)
the souls-like element comes in with the death system. when you die you have to recover your gems from your body, if you die before collecting them: poof. they're gone. this means you have to hord you flasks because the gene rooms(this games save rooms) are pretty far apart. you die and your gem progress is lost. and its the only way to really progress because you need those combos to make the drive rank go any higher. it can be pretty damn brutal. you can collect more flasks but theyre hidden around the map. usually if you unlock a new weapon or ability, there is a flask that you can access. i never found them all though.
as you can see everything is pretty bare bones here. im not really super familiar with website building but i'll keep working on it and ill make some sections for everything. maybe decorate it to look like the game? im not super artsy (lol) but i will do my best! if this is going to be the only place with info about this game i might as well make it look cool.
my name is josep (like Ho-sep) but most people call me Jo. im a gamer who grew up on PSP games when everyone else near me had a DS. i was a hand-me-down kid and my games were no acception. my psp was my cousin's, his mom gave it to me when he got a PSP-go, along with hawwa. he doesnt remember the game but he was alwas flippant with that kind of thing. im not a super tenacious gamer and ive never 100%ed a game before but i really want to try with this game. something about feeling like im the only one that knows about it makes me want to do everything possible to learn what i can from it