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Anodyne
PC (Steam)
It Makes Me Feel Good
4.5/5 stars
“Anodyne” is an Indie game in the truest sense of the term: It’s the work of two guys, Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka, who call themselves Analgesic Productions. Developed in Flash with one member of the team doing the writing and art design, the other doing the music and programming, and the two working together on the gameplay and stage designs, “Anodyne” came together after about a year of development. The old saying states that ‘lightning doesn’t strike twice,’ and after “Cave Story,” there have been very few universally amazing Indie games developed by one or two people. Yet, while “Anodyne” might not be from the same cloud that launched “Cave Story” earthwards (Nicalis), it manages to nail every facet of game creation in the same way that the ‘original’ Indie game did, and brings the same level of non-committee creativity that “Cave Story” brought to sidescrolling platformers to top-down action/adventures.
Presentation
“Anodyne” employs a tile-based system of pixel art, where each square of the environment is drawn from a pallet of pre-created squares. However, the pallet of squares is incredibly large, providing both an enormous amount of variety in the game’s various environments, but also allowing room for custom tiles that are only used once or twice, creating the illusion that each screen of each area is a self-contained art asset. Character and enemy sprites range from minimally animated (for smaller and/or humanoid characters) to quite elaborate (boss enemies), but all of the sprites look great, and it’s easy to tell what everything in the game is supposed to be.
The soundtrack is likewise incredibly well done. “Anodyne” features a large number of tracks, and I never found any of them grating. Some of them are quite bizarre and sound like they would be at home in the soundtrack for “Earthbound” on the SNES, which seems to be the overall style and theme the developers were going for.
Technically, “Anodyne” is pretty solid, though it has a couple of small annoyances. First, while the game supports an Xbox 360 controller natively, it always pops up a box at startup asking to configure the controller (which it should only do once), and when using a controller none of the in-game input prompts refer to the actual controller buttons. Second, the game only runs in 4:3 aspect ratio with pillarboxing on the sides, despite having an option to stretch the picture (which the game ignores). These pillarbox bars are also ignored by the game and apparently don’t refresh along with the actual game graphics, which causes problems with the Steam overlay leaving behind image artifacts whenever a notification pops up or whenever the user activates it manually. Neither of these problems is gamebreaking, but the fact that they are still in the game means that it could stand to be updated with another layer of polish.
Story
The word anodyne comes from the ancient Greek for ‘painless.’ Ancient Greek was a notorious language for having redundant words that mean practically the same thing, only with subtle nuances that have been lost to the mists of time. Hence the name of the Indie studio that developed “Anodyne,” Analgesic Productions, means exactly the same thing. One thing that most modern English speakers won’t realize, though, is that both odyne and algos can apply to a state of mental anguish or distress, not just physical pain. Thus we come, in a round-about way, to the story of “Anodyne,” which takes place in the dreams of the protagonist, Young (who looks like Jason from the comic strip “Fox Trot” with white hair) as he attempts to overcome crushing despair.
The game begins with a voice telling Young to ‘wake up,’ only to lead him to a place called The Nexus, where the owner of the voice, The Sage, tells Young that he has been chosen to protect something called The Briar. In order to become capable and worthy of defending The Briar, Young must venture forth into The Land through portals in The Nexus and seek cards, which, the game tells us, grant all sorts of power, ranging from the ability to drink alcohol to the ability to buy things with credit.
As Young travels through the surreal dreamscapes of The Land, he encounters a variety of characters, places, and enemies that are manifestations of his subconscious – both the positive and the negative aspects. By helping Young overcome manifestations of his various neuroses, the player gets glimpses, but never any concrete explanations, of who Young is.
Ultimately, the story in “Anodyne” is abstract and allows a lot of room for individual interpretation. Normally I’m not overly fond of abstract stories, but “Anodyne’s” abstractions just clicked with me and made the entire game come off as more mysterious than vague. While I would have liked some more concrete details about the mysterious Young and the mysterious Briar, I must still applaud Analgesic Productions for creating a thought-provoking, surreal narrative instead of taking the easy way out and rehashing some overused tropes.
Gameplay
“Anodyne” is an old-school, top-down action/adventure game in the same vein as the 2D entries in “The Legend of Zelda” franchise. The game’s environments are broken down into individual screens, each connected to other individual screens, which each contain a variety of enemies, obstacles, and/or puzzles to overcome in order to progress. While the entire game world is connected via portals to The Nexus, making travelling between areas quick and convenient, these portals must first be discovered through exploration. The game also features a handy mapping feature (in most locations) that makes it nearly impossible to get lost.
Unlike games in the ‘Zelda’ franchise, “Anodyne” doesn’t give the player access to new, interesting tools in each dungeon (though defeating each dungeon boss does provide an extra unit of health for Young). Instead, Young comes across a rather unorthodox weapon at the beginning of the game – a broom – and later is able to complete a short item-trading chain in order to earn a pair of jumping shoes. Thus hitting things with a broom and jumping are Young’s only abilities (in this respect, I found the dungeon designs, which must cater to this rather limited skillset, to be rather reminiscent of those in the Game Boy’s “Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening”). Of course, the broom also provides the ability to sweep up piles of dust, which can be used to solve puzzles or float across watery obstacles. The game’s puzzles are all well-designed and mostly entertaining to solve, though I do take exception with some of “Anodyne’s” jumping puzzles. While the jumping controls are reasonably solid, they can be a bit sloppy when it comes to diagonals, and some of the late-game jumping puzzles require Young to jump at weird angles, run over acceleration tiles before jumping, or avoid massive moving obstacles simultaneously with stationary pits, leading to the game’s only moments of frustration. Fortunately, the game features plenty of checkpoints/savepoints, meaning that little – if any – repetition is required. And since Young can return to The Nexus from the pause menu at any time, most exceptionally tough jumping puzzles can be treated as a one-way trip.
Finally, there are three hidden broom handle upgrades available in the game that provide either extra length, extra width, or the ability to alter the reality of The Land itself. That last broom upgrade mainly comes into use in “Anodyne’s” surprisingly robust post-game, which is absolutely riddled with secrets, ranging from joke items that don’t do anything to completely-hidden sub-sections of The Land (each with more cards!). While it’s possible to speedrun the game (and get an achievement) for beating it in 3 hours, I found that a first-time playthrough takes about 5, but with the post-game material, I ended up clocking closer to 12 hours.
Overall
“Anodyne” is one of the best action/adventure games I’ve played lately. It looks great, sounds great, plays great, and has an entirely unique, original story and aesthetic. I hope the guys at Analgesic Productions continue to make games in the future, as they have shown that they have a knack for it.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 4.5/5
Gameplay: 4.5/5
Overall (not an average): 4.5/5
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