Title: Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)
Developer: Upper One Games , E-Line Media
Publisher: E-Line Media
Genre: Action, Adventure, Casual, Indie
Release Date: 18 Nov, 2014
Platform: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
Price: $14.99
[divider]Introduction
Never Alone wants to tell a story. A folk tale, “Kunuuksaayuka” by Robert Nasruk Cleveland. This story is similar to those which my grandpa used to tell me when I was little. Only this is a story of the Iñupiat, an Alaskan native people. Narrated in their native language against an unrelenting blizzard set in Alaska, this is a heart-warming story of hope and affection in the vast cold. Its combines a simple platformer with narrative videos to envision the folklore. However, this admirable storytelling is let down by its gameplay.
[divider]Story
The game follows a folktale of Alaska’s Native community called Iñupiat. Narrated in their native language, it follows the story of a young Iñupiat girl as she tries to find the reason for an eternal blizzard that threatens her village. The narrated story starts off with charm and love as she finds help in the harsh winter in unexpected ways. Namely an arctic fox who calls upon the spirits of the land to acts as platforms to help you on your journey. The moral is simple; as long as you respect nature, you will find yourself to be never alone. The story is engaging and shows both sides of survival a fear of the unknown and bravery.
[divider]Presentation
Never Alone is a platformer using spirits of folklore and forces of nature to build the world around it. The storm blows strong as the little girl tumbles down trying to keep upright. There is cracking ice, abandoned villages, mountains of ice and a sparse forest. The art-style works great for the game. With bloom off the snow and heavy contrast in areas with less snow, the environment seems all the more fierce as it covers everything in its path in its own color. The environment and esthetic are kept simple and this works well with the action and narration on screen. Fortunately, the background never interferes with the gameplay and everything important is clear and distinguishable. The art, dress, characters and environments are all inspired by the local culture.
The audio is awe-inspiring and beautiful. The piano tunes breathe melancholy as the cold wind blows strong past you, only caught between furs of your hood and broken by the muffled footsteps on the snow are creaks of wood breaking nearby. The sound is a big part of the world’s immersion.
[divider]Cultural Insights
What is unique about the game is the use of documentary style cultural insight videos. These short videos (1-3min) by Alaska’s Native elders, storytellers and community members talk about both personal stories and the community. They talk about life in the frozen land, their daily routine along with a collection of some old pictures. All with the aim to invest you in the culture and it works wonderfully mostly due to the high production quality, beautiful environmental footage and good speakers. You feel immersed in the people and their stories and a sense of belonging takes over. It was a stark contrast from traditional games and the videos felt out of place very early on as I started a new game, but I am glad I did not skip them as soon after growing accustomed to these interruptions, I started to look forward to them. Most of these videos are unlocked soon after starting the 3-4 hour game while a small number of these 24 videos are unlocked by finding owls located within the levels. You can even find bonus clips on their site.
Your enjoyment of these cultural insights will greatly determine your enjoyment of the game; for Never Alone is not a conventional platformer relying on strong gameplay or technical prowess, rather it is more of an emotionally invested journey, whose story is set in the context of the traditional beliefs of the Iñupiat people. The engrossment in the gameplay is achieved using context found in these videos, giving meaning to the various elements on the screen and providing perspective to the narrative experience. Those who find the videos unengaging will not find any enjoyment in the core gameplay itself.
[divider]Gameplay
The core gameplay mechanic is puzzle platforming, a very simple one at that, with only a couple of mechanics for variety. You climb cliffs and jump floating masses of ice as you make your way across the screen from left to right. The setting for the game is both thematic and pleasing. The world looks beautiful and threatening at the same time and it is an interesting locale to base a platformer. You start off making simple jumps across spirits as they form temporary platforms to cross water or cliffs, but you realize that the jumps aren’t precise. The edge detection is off and sometimes the point from where you grab the edge is different than from its physical shape. The main character feels stiff at times and the jump does not always work as you expect. You may miss ledges you could easily climb and then climb others above your jump limit. This isn’t problematic to the point of breaking the game, but does make the gameplay frustratingly inconsistent from time to time, and for a platformer, for this to remain throughout the game takes all the fun out of platforming.
You are constantly up against strong winds and often missing on the correct timing will throw you back. This is frustrating at first, but soon you will learn to anticipate from the level design and slight cues to indicate the gust. By the time I learned this, however, the pattern had changed, which it does so often either to facilitate a long jump or as the levels progress, making it very hard to predict the same. This would might represent the uncertainty of the land but also makes for an irritating mechanic.
The game introduces a companion fox early on, this is both for the story and as a key gameplay element where the fox, when nearby, allows for spirit to appear and makes them solid for you to climb on. This can be controlled using a switch button for single player and also by another player for local coop. This would have been a good concept, but only it makes the already subpar platforming worst. During single player, the AI is frustrating, failing to make jumps, falling off cliffs, unable to keep balance in the wind. There are scenarios where the AI does not move out of danger causing you to fail scenarios where you would dodge rocks or run away from those chasing you. The game uses a trigger mechanic to progress where once both your characters are on the platform it moves to the next location. However, they require both your characters to be at particular position to work and this left me baffled many times as the platform never moved even when both characters were on it. Only after had I moved both the right edge of this small platform that the trigger activated. All of these small issues coalesce into a lot of frustration to the point where I just paused the game and left for half an hour, for at least three to four times during my playthrough. Even with 2 patches, the single player experience is still not much better.
[divider]Conclusion
Never Alone has a lot to offer, unfortunately, you have to go through many annoyances to get to it. The sum of this experience will leave you pleasantly fulfilled by the end of the journey. The issue is that while everything else about the game is charming and alluring, the platforming obstructs its enjoyment rather than adding to it. If you can find someone to enjoy the experience with, this will be one you might remember for a very long time. The game is purposeful and zealous for the culture. After all was done it was the stories that remain with me which I will watch again with family and friends.
[divider]What’s ill
+ Art and sound Design
+ Cultural thematic design and insight
+ High quality videos
What’s not
– Incapable AI
– Unreliable ledge grabbing while platforming
– Short game length
