Eastward (2021)

This game is a beautifully crafted indie RPG which combines retro pixel art with modern design sensibilities, drawing inspiration from classics like The Legend of Zelda and EarthBound, as well as the whimsical storytelling of Studio Ghibli films. And if you are not already sold on this title by this point, I don't think the rest of it's elements will, because even though this is a high quality title, these elements are still it's biggest standouts.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has retreated underground, the MCs are called John, a miner, and Sam, a mysterious girl with special abilities, as they journey to the surface. The game excels at world-building, presenting decaying towns, vibrant characters, and atmospheric environments that feel alive and lived-in. I can't praise this game's visuals enough, it is definitely what made me want to play it in the first place, but I stayed and finished it because of it's characters and story.

The visuals are striking, with detailed pixel art that brings each location to life, while the narrative balances lighthearted charm with emotional depth. John and Sam's evolving relationship adds a strong emotional core, making the adventure engaging and memorable. Though the pacing can feel slow at times, with long dialogues that occasionally disrupt the flow. Combat is serviceable but repetitive, and certain plot points remain unresolved, leaving some narrative threads ambiguous.

Overall, Eastward is a heartfelt and atmospheric RPG that successfully blends nostalgia with innovation. It’s highly recommended for fans of story-driven adventures and players who appreciate rich, pixel-art worlds. It is definitely one of the most unique games that I've ever played, despite it's gameplay not being the most original out there. Another amazing feature it has, is a in-game meta-game, which is similar to something like the classic Final Fantasy titles, totally optional but still worth playing, which you can invest a couple of hours in if you want the whole experience.

What a beautiful cozy game! I had so much fun with this. The difficulty level was a bit all over the place I didn't know what I was getting into with each battle/section of the game. But it was never hard. I think I only became frustrated a very small handful of times and always felt embarrassed after because whatever I had to redo I only had to do twice, and only rarely a third time.

I'd get so excited once I reached a new area because I couldn't wait to explore it! The art and characters in each new environment were so interesting. And I felt like I connected with almost all of them. Especially our two mains.

The story was engaging and mysterious, but it ended up not being articulated well for me so much so that I finished the game still wondering what the whole story truly is. I have a pretty good idea but still not complete in my mind. I searched youtube but couldn't find a real decent full story explanation yet. I got the jist tho, and it wasn't enough to hinder my experience. If anything I'm more intrigued. I'll go scour reddit eventually. Corporation created Mother to run the breeding facilities to help repopulate the earth after ??? The Apocolypse? Miasma helps "reboot" the population (kill off) and Earth Born was based on what happened in the past?? Then the last scene kind of hammer homes the theme of "Everything repeats" ? That's what I got off of it. XD

There was always something new being brought to the gameplay to make a fresh. And the game within the game was fun! I wished I'd spent more time on it. The way it tied into the history and future of the game was really cool (If I understood it right)

Overall I had a fantastic time and I can't wait to see all of the characters again in the DLC coming out soon. (I NEED CLOSURE)

If it looks like something you'd like, you will probably like it.

So let me preface that by saying that some of my most beloved games are walking sims (To the moon series, Firewatch) or visual novels in pixel art.

This is important because I think this game is a gem that might have been marketed wrong to appeal to a wider audience where it is in essence a niche game. While the gameplay is close to any 2D ARPG such a Zelda, the focus is mainly on the story, atmosphere and world building. That is where I think the game excels if you are receptive to the post apocalyptic, cute but dark vibes.

I feel like the pace of the game is probably what caused a lot of poor reviews but I found that quite refreshing to have a linear experience with rich characters in a game when the trends are mostly huge worlds that feel bland and empty. For instance I couldn't go past the first few chapters in crosscode because of the grinding and repetitive puzzles.

Okay the dungeons are beautiful with a lot of details but they might feel a bit easy and far between but that's okay because they always serve the story or the moment to moment exploration of this strange world. Plus the characters are super lovable.

Overall this is a game that is difficult to recommend but it struck all the right notes for me and I had a blast playing it. Also it was super cheap on sales on GOG.

Mini Review:

Artistically stunning. Musically diverse. The story, while a little confusing and messy, has core themes about the passage of time and moving on, which echo through its its characters and core plot.

The gameplay to dialogue ratio is bordering on unpleasant during its first 4 chapters, but this is remedied as the game progresses. Unfortunately, the game is easy to break mechanically, and a lot of its attempted depth with combat is mitigated by how easy it is to eat food and face tank most attacks. In addition, puzzles remain relatively simple, and most do not return in meaningful ways or evolve in interesting degrees as the game chugs towards its conclusion. Original bombs become useless once remote bombs are handed over. Flamethrower stops being useful outside of 1 or 2 gameplay segments after its introduction. Saw gun is useful for the chapter it is introduced in, and one puzzle room in the future. The best puzzles in the game typically revolve around controlling your two characers at once and splitting them up, though this only happens a handful of times. Most enemies can be dispatched with pan-spamming though a few late game enemies use erratic attack patterns to encourage use of Sam's magical stunning abilities. These are the best regular enemies in the game as they employ more mechanics to defeat while mitigating damage. But I digress.

Despite these notable gameplay flaws, and its messy story, it is difficult to dislike a game with as much passion put into it as Eastward. It is genuinely the most gorgeous pixel art game I have ever played. I can only hope one day that I can create something with as much love and care as was put into this title. Hopefully Pixpil will learn from Eastward and create a new game in the future that can be more fun to play through in its moment to moment.

Bugs: Switch version crashes every hour or two, though the game's constant auto-save function means you'll lose 2 minutes of gameplay at worst.

Time played: 16 hours

Completion: Finished the main story

Eastward is a beautiful indie title that attempts to meld the top-down action adventure combat and puzzling of The Legend of Zelda with the vibrant visual presentation and emotive storytelling of the EarthBound/Mother series. While it is an admirable attempt that gets a lot of things right, Eastward’s pacing shortcomings are so significant that it nearly derails this train ride.

STORY & GAMEPLAY

In Eastward, you control both John and Sam, who have been living in an underground community of miners. Drawn to a mythical surface world of blue skies and green grass, the duo is quickly forced to embark on a heartfelt journey that takes them to a variety of locations.

The main gameplay inspiration behind this game is, quite clearly, Zelda. John swings a frying pan around in a way that reminds me of a certain pointy-eared hero, while Sam can use ranged psychic abilities to stun enemies. In addition to bombs, you also get access to an assortment of combat tools. The way the game has you simultaneously control Sam and John in order to solve puzzles feels quite reminiscent of the Four Swords games, and there's even a light Breath of the Wild-esque cooking mechanic.

Unlike Zelda, Eastward has a linear chapter-driven structure, not unlike Mother 3. Exploration is kept to a minimum, and you progress through the game by hopping from story beat to story beat. Unfortunately, this is where this game's main flaw lies. The story's pacing can swing from brisk to absolutely glacial. After only a few hours, I have to admit that my initial admiration for this game's stunning visuals and endearing character designs turned sour as I slogged through heaps of inane dialogue sequences.

It stinks, because when the game actually lets you play, I had a blast. While the puzzles lack the depth accomplished by most Zelda games, there are still plenty of moments of brilliance to enjoy here. It's just such a bummer that the game constantly wrests control from you to make you sit through slow dialogue sequences that lack much substance.

While the dialogue can be a chore, the overarching plot is pretty endearing. It has just the right balance of lighthearted silliness and heartbreaking drama, something that you can easily compare to the likes of the Mother series. It helps that the protagonists are really well done. John is completely silent throughout the game, but is given so much personality through his actions and animations. Meanwhile, Sam is the center of the game's story, and her feisty personality never fails to steal the show.

PRESENTATION & CONCLUSION

Where this game truly marks its place as a masterclass is, most obviously, in its visual presentation. The gorgeous environments are colorful and full of immaculate detail. The sprites and their animations are full of heart and personality, to a level that I rarely see. No matter how annoyed I got with this game, I could always trust that there was a visual feast waiting for me any time I booted it up. Even the game's Game Boy-esque JRPG side-mode, Earth Born, is full of minute attention to detail--there's even an in-game manual you can consult!

The music and sound design are subtle, and after a full playthough, there weren't that many specific melodies that I could easily recall. That said, I found the soundtrack to be quite perfect in the moment. The songs that really stuck with me are the more understated ambient moments that punctuated some of the game's most emotional key scenarios.

One thing I have to note before wrapping up--I experienced frequent crashes in the Nintendo Switch version of the game. The game's auto-save mechanism was consistent enough to protect me from losing much progress, but I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said the game would crash on me at least once per play session.

I want to love Eastward, but to be completely honest, I found that I had to kind of force myself to play it to completion due to its pacing and technical issues. The things that it does well--the visual presentation, the story and characters, the music--it does really well, but I wish the game would be more focused on action and exploration rather than endless dialogue text. This being the debut title from Chinese developer Pixpil Games, I'm still a bit floored at how they pulled off such a magnificent audiovisual experience on their first try. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this developer goes from here.

I remember when I first saw this game on Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase. I was blown away by its colors and art design. When I saw the gameplay I was completely in. A Zelda like experience in this beautiful art style. I’m in.

Once I dived in and saw the animation intro for the first time. I knew I was in for something special… before I start with all the positives and how glorious this game is… I want to give its one negative. I wish it had voice acting. These characters have so much life! I would of love to have voice to go with that. There’s also times in the where you see “?” In the text bubble and you don’t know who it is. A voice acting would of helped that.

The positives… the story is phenomenal. The story gets intricate after the simple premise of a mine worker finding a mysterious girl in the mine. The music is so dope. The gameplay is great as well especially the bosses and the ending bosses are NUTS! Some will say that the game drags because it’s a 25 hour game and a chapter or 2 are throw away, but I will disagree it needed them to flush out characters.

Overall, absolutely play this game! I’m so glad that I did.

what i liked:

• a love letter to two of the most influential games of past days - the legend of zelda and earthbound.

• charming main characters with unique gameplay. sam and john are two of the most lovely main characters i've ever played with. at some point, you'll have to use both to solve puzzles or fend of your foes.

• great character writing and development. a lot of different persons with feelings, emotions and peculiarities. pretty charming and always a pleasure to talk to the people. overall the character cast was pretty well written with many memorable ones along the way.

• well executed story - it's a well rounded mix of wholesome slice of life sets and a mysterious, futuristic and apocalyptic plot. eastward is a magnificent roller coaster ride and you'll witness many different intense emotions like friendship, camaraderie, love, loss, despair, fear and many more. fantastic stuff right there!

• interesting world and decent world building. mysterious, dangerous, yet laid back and cozy.

• gameplay is "bare bones" at first glance compared to modern video games with a basic action combat system and simple puzzles, which isn't an issue at all imo, but there will be more gameplay and puzzle adjustments over the course of the game. many people complaining about it, but i can't confirm the critique since the gameplay is simple, yet works so well. the controls are responsive and there are no major flaws. a dodge button would be great tho. if you don't care about an overly unique and modern gameplay, you'll be totally fine with eastward.

• different weapons and special abilities for puzzles and combat.

• somewhat challenging and unique boss fights. the bosses are quite creative in it's design and accordingly there is a lot of variety as well. in my opinion the boss fights are going to get more complex and strictly better throughout the game. the last ones are an absolute blast to battle!

• the game is somewhat linear, but there will be freedom in exploring at times and it definitely pays off doing so. a little investment in backtracking is well worth your time, at least if you care about dialogues and for completionist reasons. do keep in mind, if you reach certain story milestones, you'll be locked out of past areas for the rest of the game.

• gorgeous pixel art and graphics with a lot of love for details. eastward is an artistic masterpiece whit a stunningly detailed artstyle and excellent art direction.

• well crafted animations which are even more impressive, considering the minimalistic graphics.

• well composed and sometimes hilarious soundtrack with calm and relaxing chip tunes and other retro themed osts, absolutely loving it.

• many secrets and chests to be found - i wasn't able to find everything on my own in the first playthrough.

• decent amount of upgrades, although upgrade materials take quite some time to obtain.

• comfortable fast travel to speed things up, but honestly i've almost never used it since the game is so beautiful. everything's a pleasure to the eye and a delight to walk through, so simply delve into the affectionate details of your surroundings. usually it won't take long to reach your area of interest anyway.

what felt debatable to me:

~ slow pacing since the game is heavily narrative driven with an abundance of dialogues, which i personally enjoyed a lot. the game is chill, providing one of the most relaxing gaming experience i've ever had and so it shouldn't be rushed anyway. could bother some people tho so i put it into the "debatable" section.

~ fantastic opening cutscene with a ghibli-esque art direction which let's you hope there are more of these, but sadly there won't. kinda missed potential.

~ eastward got an okay'ish sense of humor and some npcs are "tropes". it's adorable most the time - so i can't complain much, but some are questionable at best.

what i disliked:

• i've had a bug in the shop menu which made it barely controllable sometimes, because the cursor gets constantly dragged into one direction. to fix this issue i've had to quit the shop screen and reopen it. nothing too serious tho.

• the stealth section wasn't that great and kinda infuriating at times. may be a personal issue.

10/10

Do you want bizarre characters who grow on you over time? Beautiful art and a quirky soundtrack? Fun gameplay? COOKING MECHANICS?! Well, then maybe play this game.

The whole journey feels pretty uneven, but in kind of an interesting way? Most games have even mixes of gameplay, story sections, secondary gameplay type, etc. Eastward bucks this and will have you spending two hours in a story section, 10 minutes of adventure gameplay, then another hour of story section, followed by an hour of adventure gameplay. But that's not a bad thing! The game does a pretty good job of justifying adventure gameplay with plot. Sometimes it's a little silly in how it does that, but it's generally in a fun way.

It definitely could have used another three or four months to iron out some small things that hamper the experience, and it would've been nice if a few more sections were playable instead of being cutscenes. That's what drops this a star. But don't let that discourage you! Eastward has a lot of heart, and I'd definitely recommend it to just about anyone. Also, the game within the game is super fun. Very very good.

That's all, peace!

UPDATE: The more I think about this game, the better it is. It will age well in your mind and heart.

It is so rare to see such passion put into a project nowadays like this, apparently this game took 5 years to make, and it really came out of nowhere for me, some were waiting a long time for it to come out but it just came out for me, I honestly pity all of the demographics for this game who would love to experience such a game which is just as good as what it is inspired from, but know nothing of it, seriously, don’t zelda fans beg every year for a game like this? Yeah uh, get back to me when you’ve played all of the Zelda clones on the Sega Saturn, no but really this is an indie game that is on par with the quality of a Nintendo title, it is no joke that it somehow manages to capture the innocent charm of those type of games, even though, I’d say the game reminds me of something else besides the obvious inspirations.

It is possibly the most cheesy thing one can say when it comes to a game like this because obviously there is some modern idea interventions across the design, but “This game brings me back” specifically to that weird period between 1996-2001 where you’d see Zelda clones around the 5th generation of videos, the few cult classics that got obscured by the ones that went fully to 3D but had this amazing blend of 2D detailed sprite artwork and 3D effects. This game isn’t quite Breath of Fire 4 but it sure is trying to go up there with the greats.

No seriously, the first thing you’ll notice of this game is: PIXEL ART. This is some of the best Pixel art I have seen in decades and considering not many have challenged the medium of pixel art in a decade I guess that’s easier, but really it is on par with when we saw Pixel Art be funded by a large budget from large companies, the very last attempts at reaching the limit with Pixel Art. It is one of the most magical and sweet depictions of a post-apocalypse world influenced by Chinese characteristics, like I just kept staring at little details every now and then of how they would make furniture of old world stuff, how a house is made out of a boat and on top of that boat is a duck swimming. Miyazaki is referenced in this game and boy does their influence show.

If there is any flaw on this game, is that, it is too cinematic sometimes for it’s own good, it is the curse many indie games have when they take themselves too seriously wanna keep the spotlight on their work for too long, you might overlook it for what the game makes up for or maybe you won’t, because it sometimes makes everything crawl to a halt for the sake of it, to the point that many people might not even stick around to when the game opens up, and it is obvious, the insane amount of cutscenes at the start are all done on purpose because the game wants you TO LOOK AT IT. You know when a video game pans across a village before you enter it? That is the game developers essentially shoving a cutscene down your throat saying “We put so much detail into this map please look at it as much as you can” and this feeling is prevalent throughout a majority of the game (puzzle jingles, item receiving, completing a mission is all a bit longer than it should be), many have called this a “leisured pacing”, it takes it’s time, you can take a sip of tea when this happens.

I am not the most impatient person and when it does come to dialog (despite being hyperactive, so some of y’all have no excuse), I would rather a game like this actually try to be substantive rather than not try at all. For example, it is a common issue that games like these throw characters at you and don’t even try to have them accommodated to the player (although the entire cooking bet segment was agonizing), like 0 spent time with the characters, yet those games expect you to be connected to them magically. I guess you could edit the dialog to be a bit shorty and sometimes things are overly wordy, but a general atmosphere of this game is that it takes it’s time to sink you in new locations, I would describe it as “cozy”, don’t try to rush it too much, and honestly it’s not that bad, I have experienced far worse JRPGs that overstay their welcome when it comes to this, but yes a lot of the structure can be, a lot of exposition, and then a lot of dungeon, and then a lot of exposition.

To make the matters worse of cutscenes dragging on, this game has what I like to call: Twilight Princess Intro syndrome, essentially, and I guess this might spoil some (and I really would recommend going in blind for this game) but, there isn’t just one but 2 RANCH VILLAGE SEGMENTS. Aw yeah, this game decided to take all of the good stuff from Zelda games, as a fresh reminder, from what I remember not many people liked the prelude in Twilight Princess, Twilight Princess is actually one of my favorite Zelda games despite that, but yeah not many people even went through the first segment and if there is anything such a thing does is that it makes it a pain to EVER WANT TO play that game again.

I'm aware that this is a review of another game but as a refresher: The prelude in Twilight Princess, the first part is 1 hour long, then the second part where you’re a dog is also an hour long, then there’s the first real dungeon which is an hour long, and then you reach Hyrule fields, so knowing this let’s see how Eastward goes about it… Oh boy, I thought Eastward was gonna look up about the same when I calculated this, ok so yes remember when I said this game had 2 Twilight Princess Preludes? Well, I was not kidding apparently as it is EXACTLY that, but it’s not 6 hours its like 4 and a half hours. Bottomline this game REALLY likes to set up it’s world building and get you comfortable.

It is not necessarily a bad thing because like I’ve said, it’s not 100% bad design (you still get a well structured prelude with a nice dungeon at the end of each, and it keeps itself fresh by introducing new mechanics too, but honestly it really does feel like a long ass tutorial) if it’s really just the Twilight Princess prelude done twice and faster. I have played games that done pacing absolutely horribly so to see a game actually take the time and give you both a prelude for underground and a prelude for the world above is interesting to say the least, but yes, they both feel like a Prelude which is funny because as soon as you do these 2 segments, the game BEGINS, like I didn’t die once before any of this, but somehow the difficulty spikes, so it really kinda does feel like a nice cozy very long tutorial level. Later on a huge issue becomes too much backtracking which ironically does not allow you to visit past locations.

Usually games like these pick one or the other, but I think Eastward has managed to fuse a nice balance between inoffensive slice of life dialog, cute characters and still having it’s combat intact, and this is a game that is filled with the brim with engaging gameplay. And like I have said before, it is on par with the big budget adventure games done by Nintendo and the like, in fact you could take some dungeons from this game and easily put it in one of their games and it would not look at all out of place, the mechanics introduced each dungeon are simple but pleasant, there was never a moment I was not hooked and was curious to see more whenever the reward was a post-apocalypse story that starts as kind and warm at first and descends into the more body horrory territory, a nice dungeon, or surface level hidden treasure chests that help you unlock upgrades to your weapons.

It is honestly hard to get me hooked, especially with these games because I thought to myself that my phase of Zelda clones was done after I had played several ones, but this game keeps the formula so fresh and nice that it is hard to even see the big dogs keep up with this one. It is over redundant to comment how much this game goes out of it’s way to be a love letter to many games, while still doing it’s own original thing.

The music isn’t offensive in fact I’ve left it play in the background many times and it never got on my nerves, some music is more memorable than the others, like… Why did they have to go that hard for shop theme songs? It makes me sick, they probably know I stay there for like 20 seconds to buy all of the ingredients (another amazing aspect of this game is that they added COOKING!!! With flavor text and all for all of the lil items you cook, a staple of a good adventure games), such songs force me to stay in the shop even though I’m done with it, weirdly enough a song that is stuck in my head as well is the RPG battle music from the game within the game you find out of which is addicting in itself, yes there is passion oozing at every corner of this game if it wasn’t made obvious by the incredible animated intro.

It goes without saying, this is a game made with love, there’s even scenarios where the team couldn’t keep itself to a single art style and made little portraits in completely different ones for the characters, chapter icons too, it is not that much of a disparity that it seems out of place, in fact the way the menu design feels so modern, sleek and clean in comparison to the 32BIT of the world is a nice contrast, oh and who could forget the thing that brings everything toghether in this game: The LIGHTING, it’s like they put an early ps1 sprite game in a modern day engine with it’s lighting effects.

Speaking of nice contrasts, they cutified every aspect of the characters they could while still keeping the tone, I believe it is hard to find the balance between these aspects of modern and pixelated, silly but serious, charming and cozy but still kinda in the back of your mind a weird rendition of The Road mixed with some cyberpunk RPG. I understand why many people complain that the plot drags on and is cluttered at the start and ironically seems to be extremely vague and minimalist around the end, even though you know, the plot is actually fairly simple, it is just presented in an epic manner.

This is probably one of the best indie games I have played in a while, a must-play if you like Zelda clones, even if it is "flawed" due to pacing you can't really blame it because it shines in so many departments. Like really, we live in a really perfectionist world where "oh this game is ALMOST PERFECT!" which seems to be a very common review of the game like, very few games are really "perfect", some would even consider imperfections make it stick out as it's own product and you need those lil flaws to be perfect, they're tolerable, I'm willing to give it a pass, plus the full price of this game is worth alone for it's beautiful art, if i could hang it's pixel art on a wall, I would, anyways I still recommend playing this game.