It's hard to be the middle child.
There's nothing particularly wrong with Even the Ocean. Its predecessor, Anodyne, came early enough in the indie boom that its novelty carried it past its weaker design choices. The sequel to that game, Anodyne 2, came about a bit later and brought with it a certain confidence in its eccentricities, a boldness that improved on the first game in every way. In between there was this: stumbling, a sign of growth, an attempt to tackle a more concrete story and more involved mechanics but lacking just enough to fall short on both.
The platform puzzling is… fine, really. Fun concepts that are never really explored, rooms that are easily broken, challenges that are afraid to slow the player down. The core mechanic of light/dark energy and how that correlates to your vertical/horizontal movement is brilliant and utterly underutilized. Success comes with ease, and with that ease comes a lack of investment.
Meanwhile the story tries, sometimes succeeds, often does not. Strong character moments are undercut by heavy-handed technique while the worldbuilding is more of a fragmented tour and less of a nuanced dive. Everything feels earnest, untempered, eager to be seen but with little to say beyond a basic allegory. There are worse things to be, same as there are better.
There's nothing particularly wrong with Even the Ocean. Its predecessor, Anodyne, came early enough in the indie boom that its novelty carried it past its weaker design choices. The sequel to that game, Anodyne 2, came about a bit later and brought with it a certain confidence in its eccentricities, a boldness that improved on the first game in every way. In between there was this: stumbling, a sign of growth, an attempt to tackle a more concrete story and more involved mechanics but lacking just enough to fall short on both.
The platform puzzling is… fine, really. Fun concepts that are never really explored, rooms that are easily broken, challenges that are afraid to slow the player down. The core mechanic of light/dark energy and how that correlates to your vertical/horizontal movement is brilliant and utterly underutilized. Success comes with ease, and with that ease comes a lack of investment.
Meanwhile the story tries, sometimes succeeds, often does not. Strong character moments are undercut by heavy-handed technique while the worldbuilding is more of a fragmented tour and less of a nuanced dive. Everything feels earnest, untempered, eager to be seen but with little to say beyond a basic allegory. There are worse things to be, same as there are better.