A dream-y odyssey of a game that I won't forget anytime soon. I've become very familiar with Analgesic Productions the past while, with Sephonie being a great little introduction to their style, Even The Ocean winning me over even more and then Anodyne 2 solidifying their presence as one of the best and original indie developers going today. You genuinely will not find other game experiences out there like what they have to offer.
There's so much here to love for the nostalgic gamer from another era, with the hazy 3D adventure platformer exploration along with 2D top down dungeon-style levels with puzzles and enemies. The liminal psychedelic world that feels like you dreamed up a video game you never played from the 90's is a sad, lonely landscape, eerie-ly deserted and devoid of most life, except for the odd bizarre being you'll come across. Most of the areas feel unique and distinguishable as you navigate the various sections, with certain landmarks keeping you aware of where you are.
Just wandering/driving around these areas gives you that strange feeling that has become so well known online nowadays - social media is full of videos and posts of liminal spaces; empty malls, toy stores, nighttime parking lots, closed businesses, places from our childhood that are warm and fuzzy in our brains, but feel cold and alien now. Warbly fuzzy synth music is playing over the videos, almost like it's playing from a distant speaker. It's a feeling we all have thinking of our childhoods, but these videos have that huge whiff of "weaponized nostalgia"; oh look how perfect life used to be as a kid. Don't you hate having bills to pay and adult responsibilities? Don't you wish you could still go to Blockbuster and rent PS1 games and have a sleepover and get Pizza Hut?
What Analgesic Productions do with their games that feels like an anomaly in these times is somehow give you that same feeling with their worlds. Yeah sure, they use graphics and art direction and music that resembles that foregone time. But they create their own original worlds with it all, while also making subtle references to the real world and emotions and struggles. Anxiety, self-worth, isolation, it's all here in spades. There's a moment here in Anodyne 2 with a specific character interaction that takes the game and places you into a completely different place that had me completely turned around - I had no idea what was happening and I did not expect it. As the sequence went on and it began exploring real world emotions and feelings, it got... strange. Things felt.. not right. And then it went to a dark and scary place that I was quickly adamant to get through so I could (hopefully) return to the other world I got to know. Even if that world didn't even feel like where I belonged.
I have said this about every Analgesic game I've reviewed so far but the music in their games is always just amazing. Melos Han-Tani knocks it out of the park with memorable song after memorable song, each one distinct enough and perfectly encapsulating the area that its featured in, music that you welcome every time you return to the region. It pulls you into the world like a warm ghostly embrace; it's a soundtrack to fall asleep to, wake up to, feel comforted by and yet also feel tense and uncertain. There's also just some great bops... the guy can write a good bop!
The writing in their games (usually primarily) by Marina Kittaka is a lot... there is a ton of dialogue in their titles, but I'm constantly impressed and taken aback by the sincerity, the train-of-thought observations (and often sometimes real thoughts or opinions a lot of us have had before that feel too personal or weird to share) that they can give to a weird ass looking creature person thing that slightly resembles what a child may endearingly design in a 3D animation program, and who just stands in one spot of the world chilling. Especially with how this game handles its main story/objective; doing an Inception-style dive into these characters' inner self and exploring the little world inside, to rid them of Dust, which is what is infecting the denizens of this world. There is a lot to read in their games (they don't feature voice acting, which is totally fine), and I'm constantly surprised by the writing style and how much thought and care was put into it. Some passages really got to me.
If you're still reading (hi!) and haven't played this and are wondering if it's for you, I want to compare this to one of my favorite games, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which is a comparison I made after completing the game:
You wander around a world (Termina) divided up into regions (north/south/east/west) with a central town type hub (Clown Town) in the middle. There's a looming apocalyptic threat (the moon). You're going around talking to NPC's and helping them with problems (Bombers Notebook), which usually results in a dungeon-type level with puzzles and sometimes a boss battle, and doing so you collect a card (mask..?) and dust, both resources you need to then go back to the central hub and deposit (rupees in the bank) before you begin each new "cycle" (there's no days in Anodyne 2 like in Majora's Mask, but you need to deposit the dust or else you cap off at a certain amount and won't get any new dust until it's deposited). Both feel light-hearted and whimsical at times but have those oppressive and sad moments... their worlds are connected, but disconnected by a threat of darkness. If I really wanted to I could probably make some more far-reaching connections but I'll leave it at that. Both are still very different games but when I suddenly made those comparions, I felt like I could see why this game clicked with me so much. On top of it just being a fantastic indie title.
Analgesic should be on so many peoples radars, I really really adore their work and I find them very influential as someone who writes fiction and would love to take a stab writing a video game some day.
There's so much here to love for the nostalgic gamer from another era, with the hazy 3D adventure platformer exploration along with 2D top down dungeon-style levels with puzzles and enemies. The liminal psychedelic world that feels like you dreamed up a video game you never played from the 90's is a sad, lonely landscape, eerie-ly deserted and devoid of most life, except for the odd bizarre being you'll come across. Most of the areas feel unique and distinguishable as you navigate the various sections, with certain landmarks keeping you aware of where you are.
Just wandering/driving around these areas gives you that strange feeling that has become so well known online nowadays - social media is full of videos and posts of liminal spaces; empty malls, toy stores, nighttime parking lots, closed businesses, places from our childhood that are warm and fuzzy in our brains, but feel cold and alien now. Warbly fuzzy synth music is playing over the videos, almost like it's playing from a distant speaker. It's a feeling we all have thinking of our childhoods, but these videos have that huge whiff of "weaponized nostalgia"; oh look how perfect life used to be as a kid. Don't you hate having bills to pay and adult responsibilities? Don't you wish you could still go to Blockbuster and rent PS1 games and have a sleepover and get Pizza Hut?
What Analgesic Productions do with their games that feels like an anomaly in these times is somehow give you that same feeling with their worlds. Yeah sure, they use graphics and art direction and music that resembles that foregone time. But they create their own original worlds with it all, while also making subtle references to the real world and emotions and struggles. Anxiety, self-worth, isolation, it's all here in spades. There's a moment here in Anodyne 2 with a specific character interaction that takes the game and places you into a completely different place that had me completely turned around - I had no idea what was happening and I did not expect it. As the sequence went on and it began exploring real world emotions and feelings, it got... strange. Things felt.. not right. And then it went to a dark and scary place that I was quickly adamant to get through so I could (hopefully) return to the other world I got to know. Even if that world didn't even feel like where I belonged.
I have said this about every Analgesic game I've reviewed so far but the music in their games is always just amazing. Melos Han-Tani knocks it out of the park with memorable song after memorable song, each one distinct enough and perfectly encapsulating the area that its featured in, music that you welcome every time you return to the region. It pulls you into the world like a warm ghostly embrace; it's a soundtrack to fall asleep to, wake up to, feel comforted by and yet also feel tense and uncertain. There's also just some great bops... the guy can write a good bop!
The writing in their games (usually primarily) by Marina Kittaka is a lot... there is a ton of dialogue in their titles, but I'm constantly impressed and taken aback by the sincerity, the train-of-thought observations (and often sometimes real thoughts or opinions a lot of us have had before that feel too personal or weird to share) that they can give to a weird ass looking creature person thing that slightly resembles what a child may endearingly design in a 3D animation program, and who just stands in one spot of the world chilling. Especially with how this game handles its main story/objective; doing an Inception-style dive into these characters' inner self and exploring the little world inside, to rid them of Dust, which is what is infecting the denizens of this world. There is a lot to read in their games (they don't feature voice acting, which is totally fine), and I'm constantly surprised by the writing style and how much thought and care was put into it. Some passages really got to me.
If you're still reading (hi!) and haven't played this and are wondering if it's for you, I want to compare this to one of my favorite games, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which is a comparison I made after completing the game:
You wander around a world (Termina) divided up into regions (north/south/east/west) with a central town type hub (Clown Town) in the middle. There's a looming apocalyptic threat (the moon). You're going around talking to NPC's and helping them with problems (Bombers Notebook), which usually results in a dungeon-type level with puzzles and sometimes a boss battle, and doing so you collect a card (mask..?) and dust, both resources you need to then go back to the central hub and deposit (rupees in the bank) before you begin each new "cycle" (there's no days in Anodyne 2 like in Majora's Mask, but you need to deposit the dust or else you cap off at a certain amount and won't get any new dust until it's deposited). Both feel light-hearted and whimsical at times but have those oppressive and sad moments... their worlds are connected, but disconnected by a threat of darkness. If I really wanted to I could probably make some more far-reaching connections but I'll leave it at that. Both are still very different games but when I suddenly made those comparions, I felt like I could see why this game clicked with me so much. On top of it just being a fantastic indie title.
Analgesic should be on so many peoples radars, I really really adore their work and I find them very influential as someone who writes fiction and would love to take a stab writing a video game some day.