![]() Teamwork is essential for completing puzzles and combatįurther borrowing from the old school adventure genre, acquiring a new item allows you to circumvent certain paths. While the early game is full of tutorials, later on they expect you to experiment to figure your way through a puzzle or combat situation. The puzzles can range from simple to complex depending on how well you understand how to use your abilities. You control two characters, John and Sam, and both puzzles and combat often require that you switch between the two of them. Pixballs are useful in Earthborn, and provide clues to Eastward’s plot Gameplay and TheorycraftingĮastward uses eight directional movement, reminiscent of action adventure games for the Super Nintendo. Foreshadowing is a major theme within the story telling, so it’s interesting that the pixball descriptions freely give away information that could’ve been found through more effortful exploration or exposition. Eastward rewards you for digging into its secrets and looking for parallels, however, the pixballs used for Earthborn have literal story spoilers on their entries in your journal. ![]() The game within a game, Earthborn, is filled with connections to the main story. Considering Eastward is consistently trying to tell a story of a unique and diverse humanity against a mass produced one, the unique models help to drive that point home. The combat flow is very rarely ever broken up by dialogue and outside of boss fights, there aren’t situations where conversation will turn into combat.Ĭharacter designs are outlandish and there are very few reused models. In these towns you’ll purchase supplies and talk with characters and in the combat locations you’ll be entirely relegated to combat. Comedy is used as a breath of fresh air between the more dark and difficult story segments and the change of pace is welcome.Įach area alternates between combat locations and towns. However, these moments are few and far between and the narrative overall is excellent. There are moments where they try too hard to invoke emotion through the narrative and it has the opposite effect. Most of the writing is very clever, but overall the dialogue is a mixed bag. John and Sam wander through highly detailed landscapes Eastward’s art design is bold, ambitious and filled with meaning behind each and every choice. While most areas are uniquely designed and filled with life, the moment a map is drawn more simply, it invokes a strong feeling of loss. PresentationĮastward is filled with incredible pixel art, from the cover of the game to every single map and encounter. Both of the latter games had stories based on loss and excellent 2D combat and I can see their influences more clearly than any other precursor title. Personally I felt like Eastward had more in common with Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma than any other titles from that age. ![]() Taking inspiration from games like Earthbound and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Eastward manages to lean on these older titles while staying innovative. Created by a small indie studio in Shanghai, China, Eastward was created as a love letter to the 90’s ‘golden age of gaming’. ![]() Pixpil’s Eastward is their first foray into the video game market. Not only does Eastward stand up to its peers, it expertly uses its design to set a new standard for storytelling in gaming. Eastward’s narrative driven gameplay is an homage to some of the greatest roleplaying and action adventure games of all time. ![]()
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