Moving Day Special: Anodyne Again!

Since today was a little chaotic, I didn't get any time with The Wind Waker. Instead, I took some minutes out of my move to play a little further into the computer game Anodyne. As a quick refresher, it's a Legend of Zelda-esque game in which you wander through the main character's subconscious. It's good, retro-gaming fun.

And its platforming is really difficult.

Your jump, first off, is pretty shallow, and the edges of platforms are slippery. Unless you land squarely on solid ground, you'll fall into whatever chasm you were trying to cross. And when trying to avoid rolling spiked bars and enemies, square landings can't always be struck.

At least in Link's Awakening you could walk/run onto a platform from the edge. But Anodyne shows no such mercy on this front.

Away Game Special: Jumping Back to Anodyne

In any game, it's a great feeling to be stuck until you find the foothold you need to exploit to progress.

After finishing the demo of Anodyne and loading my save from it into the full game, I was adrift in the game's main field. At least, I imagine it's the main field. But, being limited in what I could do, I did what I could and it worked! Whatever had captured one cat was scared off by another, and that lead to a chain of events that unlocked one of the most basic functions in adventure games - jumping.

So far it looks like only small holes need to be jumped, but there may well be some sort of dash power-up that extends your jump, like combining the Pegasus boots with the Roc's feather in a Link's Awakening.

Away Game Special: Anodyne Again

Having finished the demo of Anodyne, I can say with confidence that it is a fine game, and if you're a fan of the Legend of Zelda and A Link To The Past you owe it to yourself to check this game out. Why?

It mixes the top-down adventuring style of those games with the quirk and wit of Earthbound, and wraps it in a mellow soundtrack, making sure to massage all applicable senses during its experiences.

The creators say that it'll take an average gamer 8.5-9.5 hours to finish it, but, from here, those hours will be well-spent indeed.

My only fear, having opened my own wallet for Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka, is that riding around a river on a bunch of dust that you gather with your broom is the extent of their creativity.

Even so, as an unaffiliated player, check out this game!

Away Game Special: Anodyne

Getting away from console gaming is fine with me, though Anodyne definitely owes a lot to the NES/SNES era of action adventure games. Because it's a computer-based game, it also smacks quite a bit of RPGMaker 2000 to me. I think it's mostly the game's graphical style, since squat sprites and square environments are that application's bread and butter.

Anyway, though I've only nibbled at the demo so far, Anodyne is a smooth experience that is just slightly off of straightforward. No hands are held, since the game's good at what old school action adventure games were - giving you a finite number of options to go forward and making it possible for you to try them until you find success. And really, that's what's missing from a lot of modern adventure games, the puzzle aspect that doesn't have to be a brainteaser, but can just be bump in the road that's too high to go over, too wide to go around, but completely combustible since you have bombs, or already burrowed through if you look hard enough.

So, though I'm in no way affiliated with the makers of the game, If you haven't already, check out Anodyne here.