If I can be serious for a moment, I have always had the strong belief that ignorance spawns directly from misunderstanding. How else can one group hate another group for reasons, they barely understand, that came from completely incorrect sources to begin with. Back in my day, god I feel old all of a sudden, I enjoyed Dave Chappelle. Not just because he was the funniest comedian of a generation but because he had cultural relevance. When he made fun of a different race he wasn’t just being a prick, he was trying to make a point about how ludicrous the idea was to begin with. What’s my point you may ask? Well I have always preached that the best way to combat ignorance is by learning something new, learn about someone else’s culture or belief’s, learn how they live their lives compared to your own.
That is why I really enjoyed Never Alone, otherwise known as Kisima Innitchuna. Never Alone is a classic Mario style indie platformer with puzzle like elements that teaches as much as it entertains. What I find unique is that the entirety of the game is based on indigenous Alaskan folklore. Frankly, I will applaud any game, indie or not, with more cultural relevance than a rock, aka Call of Duty. A story with actual background, especially a background as old and rich as this one, deserves to be applauded until my hands bleed if it is done well.
Much like in tradition, the story is told as if being passed on by a story teller to the listener. A tradition followed by most cultures as a way to pass on knowledge and to explain things to younger generations. What really brings this to life for me is how it is actually narrated by and in native Alaskan. The story itself is broken up into eight chapters but follows a single plot. However, I did stumble over the plot a few times. Having little prior knowledge of native stories, I couldn’t help but feel I was actually going through multiple stories instead of a single one. The game introduces a variety of traditional characters, such as the manslayer, blizzard man and the sky people.
Certain aspects were introduced and then never mentioned again while others were introduced, vanished and reappeared again later on. For instance, early on you have to retrieve an item from the ‘little people’ or what appeared to be creepy little gremlins in parkas. Besides their bizarre fetish of throwing large rocks at me I found them rather endearing but once you retrieve the item they are never mentioned again. A polar bear that seemed extremely keen on eating me was also introduced right away, then dropped and then reintroduced multiple times in completely different areas. I also had to stop and think a few times because the narrator kept referring to the main character as ‘he’ when she is female.
While the plot hits on a lot of different subjects though they do tie together for the most part, it might not be clear why but it still makes sense. A special feature that can be accessed from the start menu or pause screen is the ability to watch videos describing the actual historical importance of that part of the game. While short and about as basic as possible they are still very informative and really help the plot make sense. Not to mention you can learn something, see all that rambling at the start of my review is starting to make sense now.
I watched them all after I beat the game out of cultural curiosity but a couple of times I had to stop while I was playing to watch a clip to fully understand what was happening. Especially a point late in the game where I was moving through an old wooden town and creepy long green things started diving out of the sky at me. When I did run into one he picked me up and took off into the sky, killing me. I wondered why the tentacles monsters were upset with me and why they felt a need to abduct me. The first part of the explanation made sense to me, it was the northern lights. I assumed that but then I was informed that the tentacle monsters wanted to rip off my head and play ball with it. What? Where the hell did that come from? I don’t think the northern lights would find my head very good for basketball. What confused me was when the clip said they weren’t evil; taking people’s heads was just something they did. No, taking people’s heads is something Hannibal Lecter ‘just did’ and at least his intended use is feasible. I really wanted to know more on the subject but the clip ended, leaving me confused and yelling at the sky.
Gameplay is fairly standard, the basic side scrolling Mario style with some puzzles thrown in for good measure. At any time you can switch between two characters. An Inupiaq, or native Alaskan, named Nuna and her artic fox friend. Unlike some games, like Beyond: Two Souls, where you might as well just be Aiden the entire time because Jodie is about as useful as a wet dish cloth, both of these characters are weighted fairly even. Nuna has ranged attacks and can move objects while the fox can climb up things, move faster and jump higher. A simple formula but it is executed very well.
The difficulty also has a slow climb but it does allow the player time to learn all of the mechanics. Except for the last level which requires very precise timing and it becomes very easy to over jump a target. Puzzles become more complicated when the game introduces nature spirits, natures stepping stones apparently, which can be moved around. Mechanically it worked very well with little problem. However, after a certain point the fox becomes a spirit himself. This takes a smoothly running machine and adds extra parts that don’t help the game; it just gets stuck and starts to break apart piece by piece. The main issue is that the fox can move however he wants when he is a spirit, adding another dimension to a side scrolling game.
In spirit form the fox also tends to drift randomly and since he needs to be near spirit steps in order for them to appear it causes a lot of needless deaths. During the forest level I died a number of times trying to make a long and timed jump from a spirit because the fox will easily get blown away, causing the spirit to vanish dropping me to my death. Not as much of a problem was the inconsistent way secondary characters would act. For the most part during the game the character you are not playing as will just follow you. However, some puzzles require the second character to remain in a single spot. This can cause the issue where the second character will stop following you randomly for no apparent reason. Or at a couple of point when I needed the second character to hold still for a puzzle it continued to follow me around. While this may not be a break it definitely makes gameplay more complicated than need be. There is a local co-op mode that I did not get to play but it seems as though it would take care of this problem and replace it with user error.
Graphics are also fairly simple but have a uniqueness that really brings them into their own. For the most part it appears as a rather simple cartoon but done in the scrimshaw style. Scrimshaw is the art of carving pictures onto bone, a method native Alaskans used to carve stories onto whale and walrus bone. There are cut scenes in between chapters as well done almost entirely in scrimshaw. The information clips provide examples of a number of scrimshaw pieces, really showing the strong cultural influence on the game. I especially enjoyed the way the fox was designed, it felt natural and warm to look at and I actually felt attached in the short time I played this game. However, the fox in spirit form only weirded me out for some reason. He looked like a kid in shiny fox pajamas, an image that I found peculiar at best.
The background scenery is generally similar, dark and cold harsh winter setting. Sometimes there is more water, or trees or some other foreground setting. Since this all takes place in a historical Alaska though it makes sense that it would very similar, I’m not really expecting a ton of change on a frozen tundra. The wind effects also look and act very natural. The wind being an important puzzle mechanic, it is very important that the player be able to tell when and where it is blowing, something I never had any problem with.
Never Alone is what it wants to be, a game based in culture that entertains as much as it educates. A game that passes on its native story to the next generation, just like it has been for generations. Seeing as I lived part of my life in a similar frozen wasteland it hits close to home for me. Is it a great game? Probably not, at its core it is just too simple of a game. It only takes a couple hours or so to beat it and there is little to no replay value. You can watch all of the information clips, which I highly recommend, but they are fairly short and it doesn’t take very long to finish those either. Even if it is not that good of a game though there is still value to playing it. It shows us that video games can be used for education as well as entertainment, that games can be utilized as an art form without blowing massive budgets on special effects. I suggest everyone plays this game, if not for the game itself then to learn something new and become a little less ignorant. Hell, it is even free in April for Playstation gold subscribers on the PS4, so just do it already. If you are reading this in the future though, it supports a good cause.
