Anodyne

I have been a little under the gun with work this week so Matt is going to step up for his first post. Enjoy!

-Ash

Genre: Action, Adventure, Indie

Developer: Sean Hogan, and Jonathan Kittaka

Publisher: Analgesic Productions

System: PC, Mac, Linux

Written by: Matt Sears

Anodyne is a recently-greenlit (that’s Steam store lingo), single-player RPG developed by Analgesic Productions, though they say right on the Anodyne site “you can call us ‘Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka!’” It’s a 2D adventure game graphically akin to A Link to the Past.

As if it knew my tight schedule, the game got right down to fantasy brass tacks and directed me almost instantly to a cloaked man who explained that I am named Young, they are the village elder named Sage, and The Darkness is seeking the legendary Briar so I need to go beat it to the punch. Strong start. Excellent. This is what we like to see at 10 Minute Game Review. I don’t know what The Briar is but I am ON the effin’ JOB.

Quick hop through a nearby portal and I left the very ethereal, wizard-sanctum start area for a good cave where I armed myself with a broom (seriously) and started beating up slimes with it (slimes are the perfect first enemy in an RPG). This game was fast on track to fit a boss into the first 10 minutes!

Sadly, I wasn’t able to find a boss before buzzer time. The game continued along at a satisfying clip but complicated my screen-completion duties (that’s the normal compulsion to kill, open, or talk to everything on the screen) by adding some odd characters and signs as I went. Most of the interactions literally gave me pause for thought because of comments like “I had a new mirror installed and I swear it had a camera hidden in it! I used to squirt soap at it to try to short the circuits.” There was even a stone carved with a message about how I was probably reading stones because I have no friends. Everything seemed really out of place and sometimes ghostly or spirit-y, so I’m betting the people were all lost souls in this ghost realm. Now this game reminded me a little bit of Soul Blazer.

So it’s A Link to the Past mixed with Soul Blazer. Sorted. I went and got a can of Dew while I left the timer going because this game had just been pegged in seven minutes flat. The buzzer sounded as I was sitting back down.

Happy Thoughts: I love Super Nintendo-style pixel art, and this is some pretty good stuff as it’s well done without being overdone (most looks like it really could be from that era). Zipping along and beating monsters with a broom is very satisfying.

Sad Thoughts: Being surrounded by ghosts is sort of depressing.

What I Bet Comes Next: More people that don’t realize they’re dead talking about their fears from life, a journey to find The Briar that provides Young with the chance to learn why he’s in this limbo and how to return to life or move on (it will be moving on because this is an indie game). The final boss is probably Sage because you figure out that he’s The Darkness.