Eastward comes with an epilepsy warning, and it’s an important one. If you’re looking for something quirky, captivating, and somewhat surreal, you’ve found it. While the combat isn’t anything special and the puzzles wear out their welcome, Eastward’s characters, setting, and sounds craft an unforgettable experience. While I’d love to elaborate more on this world, the less you know about Eastward going in, the more you’ll get out of exploring this enchanting landscape. Some of the coziness seeps into the gameplay with the cooking mechanic, where you can craft some amazing meals that provide potent buffs to help take on the more challenging bosses. These cozy lore elements probably would have worked with any art style, but Eastward’s combination of spectacular music and pixelated look creates an atmosphere that proves you don’t need 4K resolution and ray-tracing to make something magical. I can’t remember the last time I did that in an RPG, and it’s a testament to what a fine world Pixpil has created.
The locations and characters that fill these environments are memorable, and I wanted to thoroughly explore the town to make sure I talked to every single NPC. At times, you also unravel other threads that have you exploring the world of organized crime, concepts of time travel, the pleasures of simple farm life, and making movies with a decidedly unusual crew. This journey across the world has you escaping an encroaching and deadly miasma. Refreshingly, Eastward goes in a bizarre and quirky direction and took me on a ride where I never knew exactly where things were headed. Many game worlds are crafted around archetypal building blocks that draw upon established fantasy, sci-fi, and other well-traveled ground. Eastward builds a world that feels real, heartfelt, and intriguing. Surprisingly, Eastward does not live and die by its combat or puzzles. Overall, controlling John and Sam both in and out of combat feels alright, but there are only a few truly interesting boss encounters and puzzles, and those are primarily found in the late game. Most of these puzzles are simple to figure out, but a few involve enemies that attack your characters while they are defenseless (forcing you to swap control between them) or involve time trials that overstay their welcome late in the game. Many dungeons include puzzle segments where the player must control the characters separately, moving them around to interact with the environment to get past elevators, overgrowth, and a multitude of other obstacles. The combat remains simplistic throughout the game and isn’t really satisfying.
Sam can manipulate the world with energy blasts, and she gains even more powerful energy attacks that must be charged up before unleashing them throughout the journey. John takes care of the rough fighting at first and uses ranged weapons and a few types of bombs to break walls and take on bosses. No release window exists yet, but stay tuned for the eventual news on when Eastward hits the PC.The tale starts simply, with a frying pan weapon to swing furtively about, a Zelda-like structure of acquiring heart containers, finding keys to make your way through dungeons, and swapping between characters on the fly to solve puzzles and handle fights. The graphics look exceptional, the combat appears to be fun, and the designs are amazing (props to the two-headed duck plant that shoots smaller, exploding ducks), so Eastward is still definitely a game to watch out for. Finally, it all naturally ends with the promise of a bigger adventure to come. After tackling some puzzles using each character’s unique abilities and engaging in Zelda-esque combat, we experience our first boss encounter. From there they set out to recover some equipment from a few monsters, walking through lush scenery and various ruins. We see one part of the journey our heroes John and Sam undertake, beginning in a town filled with colorful characters and a bit of humor. The clip showcases what appears to be a moment in the game’s beginning, but still a very impressive moment. Publishers Chucklefish now have a fifteen-minute gameplay preview ready for everyone to see, which you can check out below. And for those who didn’t get to see the game last weekend at Day of the Devs, now you too can get to see all of that hard work in action. Shanghai-based developers Pixpil have been hard at work on Eastward, their upcoming post-apocalyptic adventure/RPG game.
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