EASTWARD GAMEPLAY TV

Whereas everything underground was colored in shades of brown, these new surroundings are vibrant and often dilapidated. Published by Stardew Valley publisher Chucklefish, Eastward pushes John and Sam to the surface of its world, forced out from underground into a landscape that’s been largely devastated. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule.

EASTWARD GAMEPLAY TV

Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences. John cares for Sam, who is too young to do so herself despite her special powers, and they quickly become friends. Quiet John, who never speaks a word, takes in Sam, a naïve and strange little girl, as they quickly become inseparable. The game begins with John, the best miner in a post-apocalyptic underground town, digging up a white-haired child named Sam. Eastward’s world, spread across a variety of cities and biomes, also pays homage to the post-apocalyptic world of Studio Ghibli, the spirit of childhood adventure films like The Sandlot and The Goonies, and the ritualistic mystery of occult grimoires.īut more than anything else, Eastward is Eastward - a game where you play as a duo of connected characters.

You’ll read a lot around the internet about The Legend of Zelda’s and EarthBound’s influence, and that’s all certainly there - after all, there is a character referred to as Mother, a playable in-game RPG called Earth Born, and a Zelda-esque pixel heart meter. Eastward is not subtle about its influences: Chinese developer Pixpil has lovingly pulled inspiration from all sorts of media and combined it into a pixel art role-playing game that’s still, somehow, unquestionably itself.

Eastward gameplay