So like picture this:

You are sitting beneath an old piano in your grandmother's dingy basement. The ground is rather dirty--you can feel it with your hands-- but the lighting is subpar so you cannot see it. Upstairs, your brother is practicing piano with his piano teacher, who also happens to be your grandmother. As you sit beneath that creaky, old piano on the dusty floor in the dingy basement, you look over towards your binder and shudder at the thought of straining your eyes trying to do your maths homework. You immediately turn the other way and notice a bunch of old records. You've seen these records before, all of them are by people who died long before you were born, except for Nick Cave. As soon as you remember Nick Cave, you feel just as dusty as the floor you're sitting on, so you look the other way. Your eyes have adjusted at this point, so now you can see the stick horse in the back corner. You haven't ever noticed this stick horse before, so you attempt to stand up and walk over to get a closer look, but you hit your head on the piano you forgot you were sitting beneath. It lets out a quiet groan, and you do the same. After quickly recovering from your collision, you wonder when the piano was last tuned; when will it wake from its slumber? You worry that you might've hit the piano a little too hard because you notice that your brother stopped playing the one upstairs. As you tilt your ear toward the basement staircase, you notice that you can see the floor a little bit clearer. It is a sickly shade of beige, although it's not clear whether or not the tiles actually look like that. Suddenly, you hear the basement door open. You have no idea who it is, but you feel incredibly uneasy. Is it your brother? Is it the teacher? Is it...is it grandma? Is it your parents? You hear someone's foot meet the first creaking step and your heart starts to race. What do you do...

screeeech

You remember that you're supposed to be doing your maths homework.

creeeaaak

You haven't even started it.

screeaaak

Do run over and open your binder?

Screeeech

No wait, your binder is zipped up, they'll hear you!
Skreeek
Do you delay?
Creeeaaak
Well maybe it's-
skreeeaaak
Do you hide?
screech
Oh god.
Creak
You are panic-
Skreak
You will be-
Creak
Why are you still under the piano?!
stomp

They've reached the bottom of the staircase. The footsteps stop for a moment; you hold your breath. The silence is maddening. You look towards the sliding door and you notice that the evening has slipped away. Suddenly, the footsteps begin again....and they're getting louder...
You close your eyes.
...and louder...
You start to shudder.
...and LOUDER...
You put your head on your knees.
...until they stop right in front of you. You fear what will happen next.



In this scenario, Anodyne is the stick horse. I don't have much else to say about it.

Anodyne é um jogo 2D pixelado em que você controla o personagem Young em uma busca para derrotar um monstro das trevas, encontrar um ser chamado Briar e, como qualquer bom jogo de RPG, salvar o mundo. Você é "o Escolhido" então esse é meio que o seu emprego.

O jogo foi concebido e criado por um time bem pequeno (pelos créditos, duas pessoas apenas), o que me deixa bastante surpreso pois ele é bastante extenso e detalhado.

Você começa suas aventuras no Nexus, que é um local onde se encontram diversos portais (ainda desativados) para mundos paralelos. À medida que você vai jogando e descobrindo os mundos, os portais vão se desbloqueando. Uma função legal do jogo é que a qualquer momento você pode entrar no menu e selecionar a opção de voltar pra Nexus. Isso é muito útil quando você quer pular rapidamente entre lugares diferentes.

Os locais onde você passa tem diversas temáticas: floresta, praia, lago, caverna, hotel, espaço sideral. Não segue exatamente uma lógica. E acho que essa é a minha crítica principal ao jogo: eu não entendi nada da história. Além do básico e óbvio "você é o herói e tem que salvar o mundo", nada faz muito sentido. Tenho que salvar o mundo do quê? Por quê? Um NPC chamado Sage (traduz pra Sábio) me acompanha dando conselhos tão precisos quanto o do Mestre dos Magos. Em algumas partes do jogo você encontra placas, pedras e outros NPCs que dão a ambientação ao lugar, mas sem revelar nada de concreto. O fato de os mundos serem tão diferentes entre si também passa essa sensação de que é tudo aleatório.

Apesar desse ponto negativo, eu achei o jogo bem divertido no total. Os gráficos alimentam a nostalgia de jogos antigos, a trilha sonora dá o tom do jogo e as músicas mudam de acordo com o mapa em que você está. Além disso, o jogo é repleto de humor com um toque macabro muito balanceado.

Pra avançar na história, você tem que explorar bastante todos os mapas e coletar algumas cartinhas. Cada carta faz referência a um item ou NPC do próprio jogo e traz uma informação engraçada junto (pense nas cartinhas colecionáveis dos bruxos de Harry Potter).

Apesar da mecânica chata de que a maioria dos monstros dá respawn instantâneo quando você muda de mapas, Anodyne é relativamente fácil e cada chefão tem uma estratégia bem simples pra ser derrotado, até mesmo o último chefe.

Se você for jogar esse jogo, não o leve a sério. A sua única arma ao longo de todo o jogo é uma vassoura. Sério, uma vassoura. E você vai usar ela pra muitas coisas, inclusive pra "varrer" algumas poeiras, acredite.

Anodyne dissolve os padrões de jogos de aventura 2D e faz da sopa primordial resultante o seu sumo. Nada é como parece; vinhetas febris vão e vem em intensidade e frequência onírica; algumas vezes o jogo está feliz em jogar de acordo com as regras da sua expectativa, em outras, as subvertem para uma piada ou para um momento desconfortavelmente real - e foram aí, nestes momentos genuínos que se podia espiar por trás da mistura simbólica em que Anodyne se cobre, em que encontrei os momentos que me deram sustância, e que ficarão comigo apesar das deficiências mecânicas do jogo. Uma aula de como construir tom e atmosfera com recursos mínimos.

Completed with 100% of items collected - all 48 cards and all 13 secrets. I've put off playing this for far too long, but finally getting around to it I'm pleased to find it to be an enjoyable 2D Zelda-like, allowing for a satisfying sense of discovery through quite a freeform world that invites and rewards exploration. Combat is simple but solid, and works well when mixed in to the puzzle-solving which can be more involved. I'd have liked to see a bit more in the way of equipment variety, and the performance of this Switch release isn't great, with notable slowdown quite frequently and especially during screen transitions (Flash doesn't play nicely with the Switch, apparently), but these don't detract excessively from an enjoyable all round-experience. Oh, but how people originally found some of the collectibles and secrets without a guide is beyond me!

Anodyne is happy to leave you with the impression that it's a quirky little trip (and deserving of appreciation/analysis on that front) but also very willing to reward observation; its mechanics are simple for a top-down action game, and it tells its story in bits and pieces with wide gaps for the audience to fill in on their own. Combined, these aspects result in a campaign that's practically free of filler material, assuming you like what's on the surface to begin with and are willing to trust that the game knows what it's doing. I personally did on both fronts, and I now consider it one of my favorite games of all time.

short and fairly sweet with nice environments and chill music. neat dungeoncrawling, but surprisingly buggy and awkward at times in gameplay. the final boss was a little confusing but it worked well enough, though the bosses in general tended to be flaccid. guess i'll also mention that the aforementioned bugginess is part of what gets this a lower than average rating, as otherwise it'd be somewhere right in the middle.

kinda weird how few npcs there actually are in the game, especially since the long-winded writing mostly comes from rocks and bosses. i was hoping there'd be some cool writing to get out of this but it's so far beyond cryptic that even while looking out for it i didn't really get what was going on at all, nor was there enough dripfed to me for me to even come up with a theory. dunno, maybe there's lore in the second game or something. closest thing i got was just there being a loose connective thread of some of the characters healing from pain and avoiding pain? it fits with the title at least.

anyway i don't regret the 5 or so hours i spent in the game. i hope we get more games in this style as time goes on. i'm planning to make one myself at some point if i can get past my current projects. they're fun!

For real for real one of my favourite games. replayed it last year while streaming for some friends and it still holds that special place for me. its all about the vibes, the music, the characters. it takes you to a place, a dream, a memory. as fragile as it is beautiful, almost popping out of the screen with feelings at points. maybe thats just me. with some of the postgame stuff in particular, you can feel how its a game about being a game, playing games, escaping into an Other, something i spent my whole adolescence doing. it rly speaks to me in that way. its also been a hugely influential to me as an artist, and inspired me to want to make games in a very direct way (seriously i was reading their tigforums threads n stuff.. it was like 2 ppl made this game? you can just do that??). anyway for their first game, analgesic rly put their whole pussy into it.

To echo the disclaimer in my review of Even the Ocean, I'd already decided I like Analgesic's games before I played them, and now I've actually played two, my confirmation bias is getting, erm... more confirmed?

Anyway. If you don't already know, Anodyne is a dreamy, vague tale set inside a copy of Link's Awakening. You play as Young, who is sent out on a quest to rescue Briar from the Darkness. And that's about as specific as it gets, for the most part.

How this plays out is a mechanically familiar affair, exploring from one tile to the next, chatting to NPCs, collecting bits, battering enemies with your broom. Where this shines though is in the v i b e s it creates through the twisted and diverse world that Young inhabits, and the uncanny way the game unfolds.

Oh, and the soundtrack absolutely slaps. Big Radiohead feels in the hotel level.

I'll leave you with a quote from one of the NPCs, looking out over a cityscape at night:

"Behind every light is a person with hopes and fears and secrets... Looking out is both terrifyingly lonely and fiercely personal.
"I think I love every person behind every window.
"I love you, people, for being my stars.
"I love you no matter how fucked up your life is or how far you think you've fallen. You are lovely for tonight..."