Messofanego
Banned
Release date: November 18th, 2014 [OUT NOW]
Developer: Upper One Games
Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PS4
Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/295790/
Official site: http://neveralonegame.com/
Genre: Cinematic platformer (single player, local co-op)
Price: £10.79, $13.49
About the game PR:
Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is the first game developed in collaboration with the Iñupiat, an Alaska Native people. Nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers and community members contributed to the development of the game. Play as a young Iñupiat girl and an arctic fox as they set out to find the source of the eternal blizzard which threatens the survival of everything they have ever known.
Guide both characters in single-player mode or play cooperatively with a friend or family member as you trek through frozen tundra, leap across treacherous ice floes, swim through underwater ice caverns, and face numerous enemies both strange and familiar in the journey to save the girl’s village.
In this atmospheric puzzle platformer, you will explore awe-inspiring environments, perform heroic deeds, and meet legendary characters from Iñupiaq stories — all narrated by a master storyteller in the spoken Iñupiaq language.
- Play as both Nuna and Fox — Switch between the two companions at any time with one button press, or play side by side in local co-op mode, as you rely on the unique skills of each character to succeed in your quest. Nuna can climb ladders and ropes, move heavy obstacles, and throw her bola at targets to solve puzzles. Fox can fit through small areas that Nuna can’t reach, scramble up walls, and jump to great heights.
- Brave the harsh world of the Arctic — Run under, through, and atop the unstable structures of an abandoned coastal village. Explore the eerily quiet treetops of a mysterious, iced-over forest. Brave the fierce winds of the eternal blizzard. Only with the aid of Helping Spirits will Nuna and Fox have any chance of survival in a land where survival is impossible.
- Unlock fascinating video insights — Elders, storytellers, and other members of the Alaska Native community share stories and wisdom about their culture, values and the amazing Arctic world encountered by players in over 30 minutes of interviews.
Never Alone leverages the power of videogames to share, celebrate and extend culture. These World Games will empower indigenous communities around the world to share their stories in an authentic, engaging, and entertaining way.
Reviews:
PC Gamer - Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
A beautiful, fascinating exploration of a world that may soon be nothing more than fantasy.
Eurogamer
I approach life from a different perspective than most. I'm American Indian, and the fact that my culture and my people are moving closer to extinction all the time isn't something I often forget. As I grow, a fatalistic phrase has come to summarise my relationship with the modern American Indian experience.
"It is a good day to die."
It's a phrase often wrongly attributed to an old Sioux battle cry, and while it's loosely accurate, its true meaning has been forgotten. As my culture becomes increasingly diluted, it seems everything that we once were is steadily fading into obscurity. It can be far too easy to accept the death of hundreds of culturally rich histories.
...
"Never Alone."
There's a resonance to that title that seeps into the game, pushing you to engage with one of the game's themes through interaction - a moment that's best preserved for you to discover yourself. It helps make Never Alone metaphorically whole; the narration matches the play, and the play matches reality.
It would have been easy for this to have become just another cheap, educational game. It would have been easy to phone it in and bank on just being different enough to justify itself. But Never Alone is so much more than that. It carries the sensibilities of its inspirations, and it feels and looks just as it should. There's some irritation there, but like the best folk tales, Never Alone is all about sharing the game with someone else.
Sometimes I'll find myself frustrated with the way history has played out. It's easy for me to harbour anger about the past, and for me to seek some catharsis to ease that racial anger. Never Alone offers a different path though. Recipes can be shared. Lessons can be taught. Words can be spoken.
For the first time, I'm beginning to think today's an awful day to die. We still have so much work to do, but now I know I'm kisima ingitchuna.
Wired
And that mythology really gets into your headspace, evolving from predictable Alaskan snowscapes, knockabout blizzards, and seas of boreal ice to more surreal moments. In some you’ll consult with owl-faced men; in others, strange phantasmic creatures glide past you in elliptical arcs, casting eldritch light on glistening surfaces as they threaten to seize and carry you skyward. If Campbell was right when he argued part of mythology’s function is to encourage introspection by casting us out of the here and now, let Never Alone stand as an exemplar of the principle for future game designers.
Kotaku
Never Alone is short, capable of being completed in a few hours. But its brevity makes it feel like a future favorite fairy tale that you'll revisit again and again. Something that you'll have friends over to watch and play together. Those scrimshaw cutscenes are even more beautiful than the 3D animations in their own way, because they bring a relatively isolated tradition into the present. Never Alone's message is about the connection between the community and the individual, how the ties that bind people together allow seemingly impossible tasks. If you've ever wondered how people live in painfully frigid environments like Alaska, playing Kisima Ingitchuna will tell you, in the very voice of the community where it happens.
Destructoid
Never Alone is only the first entry in an initiative by E-Line Media to create a series of world-culture games. It's an important step for a medium that's all too often stuck in its own familiar ways. Sure, Never Alone is far from perfect, but its highs are much more significant than its lows. Rarely is an experimental take flawless, and that's the case here. But, hopefully everyone involved can take what's on display with Never Alone, improve the formula next time, and continue to teach because it's a fascinating way to learn.
Polygon
Never Alone's failings don't diminish its importance
Despite 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. 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. 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.
The Koalition
It’s certainly not without flaws, but in the end, Never Alone is one of the most solid and heartfelt games I’ve had the pleasure of playing all year. It builds tension in the all correct spots, offers a heart-wrenching but enchanting story, and forces you to often think quickly and critically about your next move through an endless series of engaging puzzles. It’s a game, a history lesson, and an enlightening experience all wrapped in a beautifully crafted entity. With a run time of around 4-6 hours, Never Alone is a game you’ll want to play, then play again. Then, perhaps, play again with friends. It’s a timeless story that will engulf both casual and well-versed gamers, and at $14.99, there’s certainly no reason to say no.
Gamersyde
Never Alone is a pedagogical experience you have to try if you're the kind of person that thinks that the value of games does not have anything to do with their length. The adventure is short indeed, but it would probably not have benefited from more hours of gameplay. We've loved every single aspect of Never Alone, the way it narrates the story, the way it sounds, the way it looks and its overall atmosphere. What's more, Upper One Games have also managed to deliver a game that is interesting to play, with solid and rather original gameplay mechanics that get harder as you get closer to the end. The game is never difficult though, mostly thanks to the high number of checkpoints, but it's really not the point anyway. Never Alone is a very nice tribute to a people that does not hesitate to share its roots with other games like Limbo, Child of Light and even Shadow of the Colossus. If what you've seen/read has kept you intrigued, join us and you'll never be alone anymore.
PS Nation
Never Alone achieves everything that it sets out to do and it does it with style. While they could have created a simple platformer with some text driven background, Upper One Games went the extra mile, integrating people from the Iñupiaq community and breathing life into what could have been a stodgy social studies project.
It was an incredibly risky project from the start but the Cook Inlet Tribal Council has been able to pull together all the right ingredients and put forth an amazing experience that all Alaskan Natives can be proud of. This is a game that would feel right at home in a classroom or a hard core gamer’s collection, and that’s quite a feat.
Don't let the arctic fox die nooooooooooo
The animations are super cute, too which make me think more of cinematic platformers that have got a resurgence now (Brothers, Limbo). 
