![]() ![]() Starbound, Stardew Valley, Wargroove, all share in that handheld-like presentation/aesthetic - with the likes of Pathway and Inmost soon to follow - and one that is almost guaranteed to score brownie points with the nostalgia crowd, for better or worse. There’s a call back to the visual design of 80s/90s anime (especially with the weird and wacky assortment of NPCs) which will always get a thumbs up, as there is a love for the GBA era of games whose detailed pixel art and suggestion of dense, spry worlds were always inviting to invest in.īut Eastward‘s publisher, Chucklefish, appear to be increasingly favoring releases whose love for pixel art and that portable-like, late-90s/early 2000s miniaturizing of worlds of all genre persuasion, were never far away. At some point you may well spot the ransacked huts, rusted taxis or school buses that appear almost symbiotically fused with the resurgent nature of its environment, but hitting its players over the head with dire straits is clearly not what Eastward is going for here. Part of the reason why developer Pixpil Games’ project stands out is its very insistence on portraying a world whose post-apocalyptic suggestions are a lot harder to identify. Yet the softened palette of color, variance of quirky character designs and its all-round pixel art splendor is majorly responsible for why such coverage is warranted. ![]() ![]() Nothing new or excitingly original there, right? You’d be forgiven for not taking to Eastward’s pitch of a premise, to once more picture dire straits for the human race: a world where the global population has shrunk dramatically, where humanity is - as you might guess - on the brink of extinction and all things seem teetering on the edge of oblivion. Though you could break it down further and categorize it as post-post-apocalypse. Reverting back to fractured, tribalistic functioning. It’s why a game like Horizon Zero Dawn stood out: a distant future where machines are the dominant force, proof of mankind’s social/cultural/creative dominance has all but been erased by resurgent nature and humanity has hit the reset button. That which accompanies on your journey: the soundtrack, the characters you meet, the gameplay at your disposal.īut then there are those games that envisage the unimaginably distant future, while one of lesser stature, with an alternate shaping of humanity’s fate and more importantly, the still-human urge to explore the unknown. Often times, though, the artistic direction is usually aided by the elements surrounding it. Discovering things that may (or may not) revive hope for a better future. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great examples out there of bleak, devoid and ruined worlds with which one slowly makes their way through. That the aftermath of a war, viral outbreak or supernatural occurrence is still being felt and that Earth (or whatever planet) is still recovering. Or more specifically, that a chosen setting doesn’t have to, by design, revert to some visibly-apparent, horrid, semblance of what once was. It’s good to know that post-apocalyptic doesn’t always have to equate to worst case scenario. ![]()
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