Never Alone Reviews
Never Alone is a beautiful game, full of fairy tale delight and educational knowledge. It isn't as patronising as that might sound as it keeps the two well-separated enabling you to take or leave as much of the cultural content as you like. It struggles though with being a compelling video game with its slow start, short running time and AI issues. It comes away respectful of its inspiration and educational as well, but won't last long in the memory as a gaming experience.
A fascinating insight into an interesting culture held back from greatness by average platforming mechanics.
Never Alone takes a familiar game style and adds a unique sense of distinction with its well-realized atmosphere and native story.
Play it for the documentary, and play it in co-op
Never Alone: Arctic Collection is an endearing attempt to blend a learning experience about the Iñupiaq culture and its folklore, and bring that to a video game.
It's rare to pick up a game now and actually learn from the experience. All too often we're gunning down hundreds of people in the name of some cause or another, but seldom are we asked to actually think about what we are doing, why we are doing it, and where we are. In Never Alone I felt like I'd been given a real grasp of Iñupiat culture and enough of a peek behind the curtain to understand a certain way of life. For that reason Never Alone is a wholly worthwhile tale, a chance to learn something new, but the occasionally frustrating gameplay jars slightly with the usually ethereal and dreamlike experience.
Never Alone is a charming tale of companionship and exploration. It opens a window to a world rarely seen and is a unique mesmerizing experience.
I'd never heard of the Iñupiat people before this year, and I'm still not an expert, but through playing Never Alone, I've gained quite the appreciation for them. Playing and interacting with this story taught me about their culture better than any Wikipedia page could. It's a fascinating example of games as learning tools and cultural documents. But equally as importantly, it's a delightful, painterly, moving gameplay experience unlike any other.
Never Alone is not just telling a story—it is connecting the player to a culture. To play it is to be transported to two places simultaneously. First, to the world of Nuna and Fox, and their epic journey through the blistering cold. And second, to the warmth of a fire, listening to an old man tell a story that is as old as the Earth, feeling it sink into you for the first time.
Never Alone's shortcomings are counterbalanced by it's huge amount of charm. This is a great escapist device because it is successful at taking you somewhere else for a while. Sure, the place it takes you may seem like a cold and barren wasteland at first glance, but once you spend some more time there you will realize that this land is full of warm-hearted people that have made full lives for themselves in the most unlikely of places.
It makes me truly happy to see game developers creating high quality products such as Never Alone that push entertainment boundaries and demonstrate that games can be culturally important. We need to see more of this game, and I hope this is a roaring success so that other native culture organisations look at it and realise the sheer power of games to tell their own stories.
Never Alone manages to overcome its technical hiccups with an enchanting setting supported with a pair of adorable characters and some interesting cultural insights into the Iñupiat community. The basic puzzle/platforming gameplay is family-friendly and works even better when played in co-op.
This is far from your average puzzle platformer, as its main audience is not the die-hard old-school fanbase of the genre. Never Alone is first and foremost an educational experience, and this is the standard to which you have to judge it in order to fully appreciate it.
You are not the greatest force in the world, one video tells us. And you feel it—through wind, through ice, through snow. Through the spirits bigger than you, and your dependency on the fox that keeps you alive and moving with its magic—on the backs of fish that dance across the waves, or breathing in the belly of a whale. Yet the humble hero, as fragile as a little girl, can still stop a blizzard.
Documentaries aren't known for being the most exciting experiences in the world, and, therefore, it should come as no surprise that a documentary-esque "game" is only mildly engaging. That being said, compared to the mental illness emulation of Depression Quest, or the political surrealism of The Cat and the Coup, Never Alone is a highly accessible version of the form.
'Never Alone' is a beautiful experience. Its somber story is masterfully expressed, but not by its gameplay. As a platformer it is subpar, and yet I am still telling people to play it. Despite its tiny length and substantial flaws, it has a soul, something that is sorely lacking in many of the games we play.
Never Alone is close to being an OK game. It has a lot going for it with its gorgeous aesthetics and authentic presentation. It even has a couch co-op mode, and the few times the game does have things to do in it, there is some legitimate involvement. Too bad these moments are too far apart, and the more vulgar qualities of Never Alone are the most apparent, such as the buggy AI, barren level design and lacking gameplay.
This may look like a harsh score, but it is hard to justify Never Alone's price tag when it is plagued with buggy gameplay and the story is shorter than Halo 4. The game is commendable for its goal and what it achieves in terms of raising awareness on the Iñupiaq culture and stories. In conclusion, Never Alone is a wonderful story and concept that is unfortunately wrapped in a slightly off, but still fun, gameplay experience.
The lack of dialogue and narration is a good connotation of how words simply do not do feelings justice. It allows us to be swallowed up by the emotions of what we are seeing without having to process words
Never Alone is a game that has gone from hardly being on the radar, to something that could quite possibly be a Game of the Year (2014) contender. Those who take a chance on this game will come away knowing they have been part of a unique experience that shows that games can be used as a serious vehicle for story telling. When we said as a community we wanted to show games can be mature… This is exactly what we meant.