Anodyne Demo Impressions – Exploring The Dream World

There is definitely a reason The Legend Of Zelda is so popular – people love to explore, discover and solve puzzles. Anodyne looks to continue on this tradition with its retro-style action/adventure action, the creation of two people, Sean Hogan and John Kittaka. In the game you explore the dream world of a human named Young. In the dream world you traverse dungeons (this game is all about the dungeons!) and the overworld. The dungeon designs are inspired by the Game Boy Zelda titles. It comes out in Fall for $5-10 on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The game is being developed using Adobe AIR.

“The dungeon gameplay remains the same, although most of the dungeons introduce a few new elements, or remixes previous uses of the elements. There’s one other item you can find, bound to the other keyboard key (default – X), which we stretch pretty far. My focus was to try to creatively use just two items in different ways, because I wanted an experience where switching between items wasn’t a huge ordeal.”

“The dungeons are thematically related to the story and the main character, Young – some more strongly than others. The areas outside the dungeons contain some commentary on Young and his relation to the areas (which can be seen as parts of his subconscious), and the appearances of Sage and Mitra will help to explain what all this “The Darkness” talk is. I don’t want to spoil it, but just keep in mind it is a dream world, and things that happen are sometimes related to the person’s in-reality self!”

The game sounds rather unique. I tried the demo and the layout and controls take some time getting used to, as does the fact that in the full screen setting it cuts of half the screen (at least on my computer and this may be fixed by the time of publishing), but it is playable and has promise. Exploring Young’s weird dream world is fun and interesting, and the music keeps the mood. The puzzles and simple combat are indeed like Zelda games. I look forward to seeing the full, polished version soon.

Greenlight page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92921739

Creator’s Twitter account: http://twitter.com/seagaia2

Official page (with demo): http://www.anodynegame.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan. He prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. He is the editor of Indiegraph. He’s our point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards.