But as it turns out, the surface isn’t all that bad. They live out of the husk of a wrecked bus, scavenging in the tunnels for junk to sell and fending off intrusions by pestilent slugs with John’s trusty frying pan.īefore long, the pair are forced to leave Potcrock, exiled to the surface. She came to Potcrock after being literally dug up from the ground by her bushy-bearded guardian. He doesn’t talk much at all, but Sam talks enough for the both of them. John’s a digger, an underground worker who excavates treasure for Potcrock’s exploitative mayor. They control two characters: John and Sam.
The apocalypse it depicts through gorgeous pixel-art graphics is vibrant, warm, and almost hospitable.Įastward begins on Potcrock Isle, an underground settlement that functions as the last bastion for humanity against a surface world rendered uninhabitable. Rather than the bucolic paradises of Studio Ghibli movies or the sword-swinging fantasy fare of Dragon Quest, the dominant aesthetic of the game is a sort of cutesy calamity. And you’ll see it in a minor NPC that’s the spitting, pixelated image of legendary anime creator Hayao Miyazaki. Whether you do or don’t recognize these callbacks, though, Eastward feels like a game charting its own course. You’ll play it in an almost fully-featured RPG playable within the game called Earth Born, which recalls the style and structure of an early Dragon Quest game mixed with a gacha-style monster collector. You’ll hear it in a telltale music cue that plays when you use a bomb to blow open a secret passage. You’ll see it in the cutesy heart meter that represents its characters’ remaining health. If you’re old enough to remember the heyday of SNES gaming–or at least have given Nintendo’s various virtual consoles a fair shake–you’ll see the ways in which Eastward wears its inspirations on its sleeve.
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