Review – Away: Journey To The Unexpected

There is a frog in my bathroom. He’s having a shower, and apologises for the intrusion. There he squats, an cute, visually arresting creature. Splashing about in bathroom water.

A sadly handy metaphor for Away: Journey To The Unexpected.

You’re a young person, on a mission to seek out and save your dad and mom. Over the 4 or so hours it takes to finish this bafflingly structured roguelike-like, you’ll go to unusual locations, beat up unknown creatures, and make mates with even stranger ones. I’ve turned corners in Away and scoffed out loud at what I’ve seen, on the sheer audacity of its character design. We’re speaking grumpy ice cream ghosts. A chatty, historical zombie bat with a gap the place its coronary heart must be. Psychic cats.

I might go on, however I’ve already spoilt a lot of the one factor Away has going for it. It’s visually ingenious, shocking, and unerringly cute. It’s additionally little or no enjoyable to play.

The major downside is that Away is a game about whacking issues with a stick, wherein it doesn’t really feel good to whack issues with a stick. Every melee enemy assaults from barely too distant, and must be struck from the identical irritating distance. It’s a grimly one-note affair, swiping at snowballs and crabs that solely react by being knocked again, flashing or dying.

They would possibly look totally different, however foes all behave in a lot the identical means. They cost, or they fireplace projectiles. I like that plant spittle goes “flub wub wub wub” because it sails previous your face, however that’s virtually the very best factor I can say concerning the fight. I had way more enjoyable intentionally avoiding it, weaving between enemies moderately than subjecting myself to the tedium of disposing of them.

There’s no avoiding the construction. An XP system does unlock shortcuts, however you’ll nonetheless should repeatedly trudge by the identical handful of mini-dungeons, and two bigger ones that don’t rearrange themselves in a means that’s practically satisfying sufficient. One space isn’t even randomised: you would possibly end up working and leaping by the identical icy gauntlet 4 or 5 instances, every jaunt extra chillingly uninteresting than the final There are a number of, uncommon instances of games that pull off enjoyable first individual platforming. This could be very a lot the rule that proves the exception.

The structural issues don’t finish there, however I can solely clarify the remaining by ruining extra surprises. If for some purpose you’re nonetheless considering you would possibly give this a shot… cease studying, I suppose?

Just like life, you want mates to get forward. For causes, you’re making an attempt to satisfy Ping-Pong, the Lord of Cause and Effect. He’ll solely open his door once you’ve made eight mates, scattered throughout 4 totally different zones. Which is form of neat, besides befriending a few of these folks (or skeletons, or sentient ice lotions) means navigating a dialog the place the mistaken dialogue alternative is tantrum-worthy. Make a mistake, and so they’ll refuse to accompany you – forcing you to kill your self and trudge all the best way again for an additional go.

Those mates (or um, robots you’ve both paid or tricked) are an admittedly attention-grabbing contact. You can swap to them at any time, having access to their capability – which is normally a ranged assault. Neater, although, are the totally different filters every character plasters over your display – reminiscent of an indignant tree that makes the whole lot go a bit Obra Dinn.

There we go, again to speaking about seems to be over substance. It’s an identification that’s been squandered, a world with delights I can’t suggest you go digging for. Away begins with just a little snippet of anime, which has left me wishing that had been made as a substitute.

I really feel rotten, panning a game that’s pleasant in some methods however irritating the place it issues. Just a number of weeks in the past I wrote about how I wanted more games would embrace the absurd, and that’s precisely what Away: Journey To The Unexpected got down to do. It succeeded, however oh boy did it fail.