Developer: Upper One Games, E-Line Media
Publisher: E-Line Media
Rrp: £11.99 (Steam), £11.99 (Humblebundle), £14.39 (Gog.com)
Released: 18th November 2014
Available on: Steam, Humblebundle and Gog.com
Played using: An XBox 360 control pad
A lone girl wanders the Alaskan wilderness on a quest to find what is causing the near constant blizzards affecting her people.
Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is a game where you play through a folk tale. From what I can tell from my research this is a tale that has been created specifically for the game. The game is a product of a partnership between E-Line Media and The Cook Inlet Tribal Council, giving a sense of authenticity to the tale being told.
Anyway, Never Alone essentially is a puzzle platformer but it’s also a piece of cultural education with ‘cultural insights’ being unlocked as you play. These cultural insights are videos you can watch (accessible through the main menu) to learn more about the Inupiat people. These videos are pretty short and I found them interesting to watch.
The story is told at the start of each chapter with a voiced over animation, each level then uses a cutscene at the beginning along with narration that is spoken in the native language of the Inupiat. For those of us that don’t speak that language they have kindly included subtitles that are automatically turned on.
Early in the game you gain a Artic Fox companion, from that point on you get to switch between playing as the girl or the fox, this will allow you to get beyond certain obstacles. Because of that the game falls into that same strange genre that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons did, which is ‘Single Player Co-Op’. Although it doesn’t do it in quite the same way or with the same feeling.
If this interests you then perhaps try;
