![]() You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy here. Never Alone was reviewed on PS4 using a download code provided by E-Line Media. If you can patiently plod your way through the game entwined with the story of the Iñupiat people, I suspect you’ll cherish them too. While I’m in no great rush to play it again, the appreciation I gleaned for a culture I knew practically nothing about is something I really cherish. Wrap Up: Never Alone's failings don't diminish its importanceĭespite Never Alone’s failings, it’s an effective, important experiment in blending gaming and education for grown-ups and, as such, I find it hard to entirely dismiss. Hearing about a culture is one thing, but the ability to then walk around in that culture, to face enemies and traverse environments informed by that culture’s struggles really helps the information stick. It’s tempting to wish you could divorce Never Alone’s entrancing, beautiful, heartfelt videos from its mediocre game, but you’d be doing them both a disservice. It sounds great, thanks to a sparse score and a mesmerizingly gruff narrator recounting Nuna’s story in the Iñupiat tongue. It looks great, with some lovely animation and stark environments. The game component of Never Alone does have some strengths. Solo play pushes Never Alone from inoffensive to infuriating and frankly should have been omitted entirely. Having a partner doesn’t make Never Alone more engaging or inventive, so the core issues remain, but at least they’ll keep you from wanting to pull your hair out. NEVER READ ALONE Benefiting Dog Inspired Reading Programs To Advance Children’s Literacy Donation Amount 25 50 100 250 500 Select Donation Frequency Apply My Donation To Please select. Solo play pushes Never Alone from inoffensive to infuriating ![]() Once my wife took over controlling Nuna, it was infinitely easier to keep the two alive. Towards the end of the game, when the pair find themselves more frequently threatened by enemies, it’s a Sisyphean task to navigate Nuna to safety and then instantly switch to save fox who sits patiently awaiting his death. In many games, Nuna’s cultural heritage would be a helpful way of rounding out her character, but Never Alone injects that cultural identity in every crevice of the world she inhabits and the story in which she plays the starring role. When her village is plagued by blizzards, a young Iñupiat girl named Nuna sets out - with the aid of a helpful white fox - to find their source and, hopefully, put a stop to them. ![]() On its surface, Never Alone is a serene, beautifully-rendered platformer in the spirit of Limbo or Braid. But the platformer built to help make this education easier to swallow is a little bitter. The story and heritage developer Upper One Games and publisher E-Line Media is distinct, and its presentation is made with care. Never Alone isn’t a textbook-style interactive CD-ROM, but it enrobes a fascinating cultural survey with a candy coating of game mechanics. But puzzlingly, edutainment has remain mainly the purview of games aimed at kids. From Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? to Oregon Trail, the power of games as teaching tools has been demonstrated countless times through the years.
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