Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)

Never Alone в первую очередь заинтересовала меня совместным локальным прохождением, таких игр не сказать что много. Думаю это очень важно, потому что одному в это играть будет совсем скучно. Имейте это ввиду. Игра очень крошечная , проходится при нормальном раскладе , примерно за часов 5 максимум. Она не успевает надоесть, но игровые механики постоянно повторяются , геймплей примитивный , но для меня это было скорее плюс. Моей девушке досталась роль лисицы ,а я играл за девочку с пращей. Она не самый искушённый геймер , потому ей было достаточно трудно и интересно, думаю если будете играть с детьми тоже получите удовольствие, заодно можно это совместить с обучением , в игре рассказывают про народы севера, было достаточно интересно. В ней почти нет жестокости , а характеры героев и злодеев сделаны прямолинейно и понятно, игра ощущается как небольшая сказка и это несомненный плюс. Довольно часто встречаются баги, и в целом она смотрится немного корявенько. Брать строго по скидкам.

A mini-masterpiece, very educational and full of soul. I loved the videos. I didn't find it too difficult. Feels like it would be a fun game for families to play together.

Never Alone is a passable LIMBO-esque game that is only elevated by its indigenous documentary. This indie game is made by/with the help of Indigenous people of Alaska and is a respectable feat. But as a game, it is pretty lacking, especially that Limbo came out years before this. On their official website, they claim "we've paired world-class game-makers with native storytellers..", are you kidding me? world-class who? The gameplay design is borderline primitive! In the end this is an indie game, there isn't even a whiff of "world-class" here. Just because this game won a BAFTA, doesn't make the game's subpar mechanics into "world-class". The game itself is visually beautiful. The main selling point are the documentary segments that teach about the Inuit cultures. Those were the only things that kept me playing. Locking the documentary parts behind collectibles, was not that good of an idea. In the later game, where it is harder to find them or you are pressed for time, you inevitably skip over some. This locks you out of seeing the whole documentary. They should have automatically unlocked everything once the game was completed, just so these precious documentary interviews would not be lost and forgotten. I missed like 2 and can't be bothered to replay 2 chapters just to get them. Especially when the gameplay, controls and mechanics are subpar. I get what they were going for with the local Co-Op, but solo players have to babysit two characters. Usually when you play one, the other follows. But here is a big issue, they don't become immortal NPC during that time. When they eventually are hit by an attack or miss a jump and die, then its game over for both. The most annoying part was when the AI was too stupid and sometimes just leapt into certain death, which frustrates you even more! The bola weapon aiming is horrendous too. It does not launch in the desired directions and its controls are trash. This is worse in time-sensitive and dangerous segments, where a single miss means game over. The jumping puzzles and parkour was also not very polished, meaning that you could randomly die just because a pixel touched you. The bugs and glitches did not help. Combine all that, and it was a pretty subpar experience. I was this close to dropping this game and even now I am more inclined to give it a Negative rating. The only thing elevating it were the documentary segments. Also the Foxtales DLC that game better puzzles and tighter controls proved that this game could have been more solid if the "world-class" developers wanted it to.. Because there ain't a mixed rating on Steam, I reluctantly give it a positive score because it just barely passed my criteria. Also I got this game dirt cheap. They announced a sequel? I am doubtful.

I feel really bad leaving a bad review for this game, as the story was good and the educational aspects are great, which is usually enough for me to be lenient if the gameplay isn't as good. But I have to draw the line at borderline unplayable. Its age is not an excuse either, since there's platformers from the 80s that play unbelievably better. I will start by saying it's fairly obvious that the game is designed for a co-op experience, which is not how I played it, and I do suspect many of the issues I had wouldn't have been this bad if I played with a friend. Still, since singleplayer is an available feature they should have at least built it properly. As it is now, the character I control is severely limited in their movement and actions, both by the camera and by the fact that half the time the character I am not using will actively jump off a cliff to kill themselves the moment I switch. And again, I get that it's made for co op, and I do plan to replay in co op someday to see if it's any better. But if singleplayer couldn't be any better, they should have just made the game co op only. Besides that, the overall feel of the game and the gameplay loop itself are a hot mess: The characters move slower than a hundred year old grandma, but are supposed to be making jumps from one corner of the screen to the other, at many points requiring the use of momentum to do so. At the same time, it is often unclear what is and isn't a platform, an interactible item, or just background art. At some point, you gain the ability to swim, but it is never communicated that you do not get to keep this ability, since immediately after leaving this level falling in the water will kill you. Even as a level gimmick it's weird to take it away, since they could have just made the water contain some other obstacle, but if you're going to immediately present me with water after I spent the last 40 minutes in the underwater swimming level, at least warn me that I can no longer swim... Aside from these, it's usually difficult to see where to go next, both because of the aforementioned singleplayer mess, but also because the camera sometimes just de-centers the characters for no reason, even if they're both at the exact same spot. Also, the spirits will sometimes disappear when they're not supposed to, i.e. when the fox is right on them but I switch to the girl. As a matter of fact, bugs are abundant: in the underwater section, the fox kept clipping on walls repeatedly and being unable to move; In multiple intensive platforming sections the girl wouldn't jump to lower platforms because they intentionally clip to the platform corners even if you don't want them to; And many times the characters collided with some transparent object and stood in the air for about ten seconds before being moveable again. And a minor thing that bothered me a bit, there's DLC exclusive achievements, which I don't appreciate regardless of the game. Not to say there aren't positives: The artstyle was very cute, though in my personal opinion it would have been more interesting to stylize the 3D models and environments more similarly to the cutscene artstyle, which I understand is inspired from traditional Iñupiaq art. It does look good visually as it is, but it feels like it'd have been a good opportunity to further maintain the theme. The spirits do look especially great, and I do think those are closer to the cutscene style than the 3D stuff. Besides this, the narrator's voice was very soothing and I really enjoyed the story as a result to this, looking forward to the next time he'll speak. And most of all I loved the documentary style insights. To me, they were the highlight of the game. Ultimately, I want to say there is very obviously so much love put into making this game, and it is shown in all the artistic elements throughout. Sadly, this doesn't make up for the mechanical aspects... I heavily recommend watching a playthrough or at the very least just the insights though. With the gameplay removed, I think the artistic aspects of it might shine through.

Can't believe it's taken me so long to play this game, it's utterly delightful. It's a fantastic example of why games can be a powerful tool, it teaches the player about culture, indigenous people and history in a fun and engaging way. I've learnt more about the Inuit the last hour then I have for years, and it gets you curious for more. Not to mention the controls are forgiving and the graphics are soft and great for a laptop gamer as myself. (Also the colours aghh)

Started off great. But midway through, the fox character gained an ability and player 2 are suddenly no longer playing a platform game. To makes matters worse they also have almost no tasks and are forced to just sit around watching player 1 finish the game. Very strange design decision that ruin what could have been a great coop game.

Really bad game mechanics, I had to play this game for my Native American Art History class and this has got to be the worst game experience of my life. I get having a coop game but ♥♥♥♥ the ai doesn't know what it's doing half the time so if you play by yourself you repeatedly have to swap characters in areas that if you stay still in you die. DO NOT BUY.