Never Alone Review
Never Alone is an indie game developed by Upper One Games and published by E-Line Media. It launched this week (precisely on November 18) on PC, PS4, and Xbox One platforms. Never Alone or in Iñupiaq (Alaska’s native people language) Kisima Inŋitchuŋa is a platformer game where an Iñupiaq girl known as Nuna and her faithful companion, who saved her from a polar bear attack, set on a journey to discover the blizzard’s source; the story is told in eight chapters which combined offer players about 3 to 4 hours of solid gameplay.
In my opinion, Never Alone should be categorized as “cultural platformer” because it teaches so much about the Iñupiat people’s culture through videos called insights (easily unlocked through playing the game and finding the owls, which are not hard to find at all). Most of the basic gameplay mechanics of a platformer game is present such as the standard jumping, running and the old grab-that-box-and-put-it-there-to-climb-it-and-get-to-the-higher-ledge. Still, Never Alone has a few gameplay perks as it forces you to solve puzzles through switching between characters or taking advantage of the strong wind caused by blizzards, which adds to the game’s immersion. This mechanics also has its problems, as it doesn’t work all the time because you need to perfectly time your jump with the wind blowing which is somewhat hard, since the wind blows in nearly-random intervals.
The game is playable in singleplayer, but you should play with a friend in co-op if you can, otherwise you will have to switch between characters quite often which means that the AI will take over the other character, and that’s where a major problem lies. The AI isn’t that clever as it sometimes gets stuck, or kills itself or even your character. Let me clarify how it may kill your character: the arctic fox helps you by showing spirits that are platforms to step on or ropes to swing from; however, if the fox moves away for a bit, the spirits disappear and your character will fall to the ground. Alongside the weak AI, controls are somewhat unresponsive, which gets frustrating when you try the same level over and over again just because the character didn’t jump enough even though you pushed the button flat on your controller.
After one of the missions, you will be rewarded with a crafted item called The Balo. This item basically is ropes tied together with a glowing blue stone at the end of each rope. It is used in the game to catch flying spirits that will offer you a platform to move on to. The villain of the story, who is a big guy with a large mustache, is after this item. To aim with the Balo, you need to hold the right stick on the Dualshock 4 controller and release it in the direction you want to throw it at. Here is another problem, there is really no aiming assistance in the game or anything like that, you will have to depend totally on your eyesight and direction judgement; when you are being chased by a polar bear or that villain we talked about earlier, this can slow you down because you need to come to a complete halt causing you to die. It would have been better to be able to aim while moving.
The arctic fox dies in one of the levels and turns into a flying boy-fox spirit that has the ability to move platforms by interacting with them. The spirit can only move platforms who are made of spirits as well, but there isn’t any indication which platform you are interacting with if there are several platforms alongside each other. Also some spirit platforms can’t be moved, but they still look exactly the same as the platforms which can be moved.
Despite the gameplay flaws, though, the narration is pretty good. An Iñupiat elder tells the events in the native tongue, which fits Never Alone perfectly; environmental sounds are also very well done. The art stands out even more though, with the game’s normal grey-and-white pattern (due to the environment) happily disrupted at times by different colors.