![]() ![]() Climactic battles are all scored excellently with pulse-pounding arrangements, while some of my favorite tracks are actually in the game’s quieter, more peaceful and melancholy moments. Harsh tunnels are warmed by shafts of light breaking through, and a house is illuminated by cool blue work-lights in the middle of the night.Įastward’s soundtrack is likewise a stunning take on ‘retro’ style game soundtracks, full of cathartic and exciting chiptune-adjacent arrangements. Eastward reviewĮastward’s use of light in particular really pops, with settings lit with such intention that it clearly shows the difference between the environment design and the light design. Ramshackle buildings, whole settlements built around craters in the ground, and a massive city basically held together with staples and prayer, all fill the world and make Eastward feel completely well-realized and lived-in. Each area clearly depicts a world once destroyed and now only partially-reclaimed. While the term “pixel art” comes to mind in describing the GBA-era 2D art style, Eastward’s visual style doesn’t feel like it’s meant to evoke the general vague identity of pixel art, which comes across like a term generally used just to refer to minimalist visual representation in games.Įvery setting in Eastward is eye-popping in its use of color and levels of detail. The post-post-apocalyptic world of Eastward is absolutely gorgeous. These puzzles are most reminiscent of similar tandem character puzzles in the Mario & Luigi RPG series on the GBA and DS. Environmental puzzles will also have you splitting the pair up to solve problems in tandem, though you’re always meant to keep them both on the same screen. Sam, on the other hand, can use her special powers to shoot energy and freeze enemies in place for a moment, but is largely the less combat-ready of the two. John is your main damage machine, as he gets the weapons that can actually damage most enemies. ![]() Combat with enemies is simple on the surface, but as they get quicker, more numerous, and more resilient, the difficulty curve escalates in surprising, but never unfair, ways. Eastward reviewĮastward’s gameplay is a fairly straightforward loop of arriving at a new place, getting invested in its locals, seeing how John and Sam fit into their new world, and embarking in and out of these hubs of human activity to explore the parts of the land that haven’t been reclaimed by humanity yet. When Sam’s ardent belief in life on the surface gets her and John in trouble, they end up on an adventure beyond their confined world, meeting kooky characters and fighting all manner of monsters to stop another end of the world. They live together in a run-down trailer in a derelict mining community, spending each day in fear of the surface world that legends say has been scoured by life-choking miasma. You play as John, a silent miner who stumbles upon Sam, an excitable young girl with magical powers who is the second playable character. However, despite all of these similarities with other games, Eastward manages a fantastic trick and emerges as its own distinct, unique experience. Finally, its central character types are a gruff older man and his precocious child ward, an arrangement that echoes many games, not least of which The Last of Us. It takes its quirky world, character design, and mix of giddy childishness and heavy drama from Earthbound, and the similar recent phenomenon of Undertale. Its gameplay, combat, and exploration are akin to 2D Zelda. Eastward is, on the surface, the sum of a lot of parts popularized by other classic games. ![]()
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