My thoughts on the game

[Ghin]

Obviously there are going to be spoilers in this, so if you're one of those people who doesn't like spoilers and hasn't played the game, this is your warning.

I don't regret buying Even The Ocean, but I felt it could have been a better game. It seemed a bit too easy to me. I felt like it was missing the charisma Anodyne had. Exploring that strange world and the hidden puzzles were a big part of its charm. I felt like Aliph was forced down her path with no control. Was there a way to save everyone? I felt like I shouldn't play through again to find out.

The platforming parts weren't challenging enough for me. It seemed like every room could be solved just by going towards the other side as quickly as possible. When I did come to a room that stopped me from doing that (some of the laser rooms for example), it felt out of place. It felt like I was being forced through each area towards my fate. Even the discovery of the other ocean felt like that. I couldn't make it through the green block ocean without the wonderful story and artwork to pull me on.

I'm not sure if I enjoyed the game or not. That isn't to say I disliked it. I think 'enjoy' is the wrong word.

I appreciated the game. Thank you for making it.

[FourZeroNine]

The postgame is easily the weakest aspect of the entire game, in my opinion. Looking at and playing through early versions of the areas with (mostly) completed artwork, like early Dreamdram was nice, but the green block parts... Bleh. Insight into a game's development is always a bit intriguing, and the parts of that which were more than just one cut object and a bunch of green blocks, I enjoyed.

As for the game itself, it's easy, but that's not exactly a bad thing, as the game is pretty fun, which is what really matters... Some of the postgame challenges are REALLY tedious, and I can see why the difficulty was toned down. As for if there's another ending, I guess I'll have to play through again once or twice to see if anything changes through each playthrough depending on what I do...

I certainly enjoyed it as much as I did Anodyne, though comparing the two is like trying to say that an apple and an alligator are alike because they both start with the letter A. They may be by the same developer, but they're very different beasts.

And if you didn't see the early artwork versions of Dreamdram and Restview, go through the green block versions of them and you'll end up there ;)

[Ghin]

I did actually leaf through the postgame sections with some of the movement codes on. It seemed like a lot of it was "we had this cool idea but then we didn't do it" and maybe I missed the reasoning. I think I might have been the type of person who enjoyed that theoretical game more than the real one. I mean it doesn't have to be ridiculously hard, I think maybe Yoshi's Island level of difficulty would be ideal for it. I kind of felt like I was on a waterslide playing the game and there was nowhere to stop or change course.

I saw three places where there might have been a fork that I missed.
1) Whiteforge City where you flip the 3 switches. I didn't see what happens if you let the heat meter go to the max.
2) Something to do with Lopez. I didn't press the issue with her conversations.
3) There might be hidden areas in Karavold I didn't find. I didn't look very hard because of the previously mentioned waterslide effect.

Those and maybe the power plant fixing order would be the places I see forks.

[Kituss]

I think we all expected some Anodyne-level postgame and were disappointed because that's a very hard thing to achieve. A little look into the development process of the game, with dev commentary, was really fun to me and I enjoyed it a lot even though it could indeed have been more !

On another note, I don't think there is another path in the game and I also feel like it's a missed opportunity. The game feels too forced at times, kind of like it's teasing us and making us expect to see "SOMETHING BIG" happen. It would really have beneficited from something like that... But I still loved what it did and am very disappointed it's not selling well. I mainly blame the new Steam storefront, but it's such a shame. Congratulations for releasing a great game, devs, and I sincerely hope you will be able to keep on doing what you love in the future.

[FZeroRacer]

I agree entirely, though in my case I would saw I regret buying it at $15. It feels a bit too hollow at that price point.

A lot of the story stuff is really shallow and the game feels like it's an eternal tutorial rather than expanding your skills and toolset. Plus as others said, the postgame is really weak.

[FourZeroNine]

Now that I think about it, there is something that legitimately bothers me in the postgame:

One of the Chapter 3 areas in the Old Ocean is just a glitchy version of the world map for some reason, with commentary that has nothing to do with said glitchy world map...

I'm beginning to think I'm missing something there, but it probably won't be accessible until we somehow discover a way to noclip or fix that particular level to work properly, both of which seem extremely unlikely.

[Melos Han-Tani]

Originally posted by MAXinsanity/409:

Now that I think about it, there is something that legitimately bothers me in the postgame:

One of the Chapter 3 areas in the Old Ocean is just a glitchy version of the world map for some reason, with commentary that has nothing to do with said glitchy world map...

I'm beginning to think I'm missing something there, but it probably won't be accessible until we somehow discover a way to noclip or fix that particular level to work properly, both of which seem extremely unlikely.

Hi, dev here. That chapter 3 area is a bug... that's supposed to be the first map of old riverton but I saved over it with the world map data by accident. If you go in to the other entrance of that place from the world map you can see the rest of the old river area.I'm planning on fixing this in a later patch.

I'll let you know there is only one ending in Even the Ocean, and that looking at that ending in juxtaposition with the entire game's story is a good way of analysis.

If you look at Even the Ocean say, through a lens of trying to find what you liked in Anodyne, you will probably be disappointed, because they are different games w/ different goals - Even the Ocean intentionally has no secrets or vagueness with the story. We were more interested in presenting a clear story this time around.

It's a story that may not feel deep to some *at first glance*, one reason that is is because unlike anodyne, we are not leaving gaps in the story that people fill in with their own backgrounds and speculations. Even the Ocean is meant for you to dig in to over time and make connections within the story and your own world.

Likewise, the post-game is totally different from Anodyne b/c of the lack of secrets. Post-game in ETO is more of a historical thing for people to see how a game's design or ideas evolve over time, etc.

[Melos Han-Tani]

Re: level design,the game is more about presenting smaller spaces with different ways of moving through them that don't hang you up on some kind of precision platforming or difficulty level. I feel a bit similarly that if you analyze level design from the angle of it not being hard, it will not be a very interesting analysis (because the level design was not designed to be hard).

[Melos Han-Tani]

Oh, and I don't mean to discredit or criticize people's opinions or preferences for Anodyne, I'm more trying to encourage some ways of looking at Even the Ocean that may be more fruitful and valuable. Not that comparisons to Anodyne can't be valuable, but I think it may be more interesting to look at EtO in other ways.

[FZeroRacer]

See; I think the issue with Even the Ocean's story is that it is a bit too on the nose. I understand the themes and the point it's trying to make, but it comes across as shallow because most of the story is delivered in short snippets at the start and end of each act of the game. During the actual gameplay portions most of the story, especially in the later parts of the game is 'I did the thing' 'Yup you did the thing, good work'.

The best point of comparison is To The Moon in terms of narrative structure I think. To The Moon worked because the ending had something that was really quite human; an experience that almost everyone has gone through and it could be viewed in many diferent lenses. Even the Ocean ends on a sorta flat note because that connection is missing; it's hard to feel connected to these characters that you hardly got to know with an ending disjointed from those arcs.

I think if a lot of the cruft around the edges of the game was filed down a bit and focus was put more on the core cast + their arcs it would've been a better experience. It spreads itself a bit too thin sometimes with the cast you find as you venture out into the various plants and parts of the world and unlike say, LISA, it's lacking an overall sort of characterization to provide context to everything.

[none]

I really enjoyed the game, even though I agree with most of the criticism. I liked that it felt very relaxing to play after work and you always had those level units that were not too time consuming and always had a new kind of "challenge" to them.
I think in terms of difficulty it would appeal more to the casual gamer, more like a Super Mario World than a Castlevania. Some of the later areas were a bit more challenging, but most of the time it felt like just breezing through without having to think about a strategy, which I think is a bit of a pity because the game design really has much potential that in my opinion is not leveraged well enough. I liked that in later game areas you had to "get hurt" more in order to progress and try to keep the balance of your energy bar stable at the same time. It'd have been nice to see more of that, especially forcing the player to use the advantage of horizontal vs. vertical speed when energy is out of balance to make progress in the level.

Another thing that bothered me was that there always were obstacles in the game that made no sense to me, like these purple chains to force the player to go another way. It would have been better to use natural obstacles like the big rock on the way to the earth geome for example. But maybe that's just me, I know games are not supposed to be logical all the time. :)

Although I really liked the side stories on the way to the main levels, I found them too rushed and shallow, it was just like "yeah, whatever, no big deal". I think this is similar to some of the criticism above regarding the main story of the game. To me, the gameplay feels like an action adventure but the story wanted more room to breathe. Maybe especially because the game (and soundtrack) is more relaxed/meditative, the story elements should have also been more contemplative and slow paced, so maybe this is what makes it feel "out of phase" to me. I'd have loved it to be more like in "Front Mission – Gun Hazard" (SNES), where the action and story elements are really well balanced and have a dense atmosphaere to it, even though you also had a discrete mission-style gameplay. There was nothing that felt out of place and the side characters had more impact on the main story and everything was more unexpected.

But I don't want to say that I could've done it better, I am not a game designer and I can imagine how hard it is to design a great game without having a big team with specialized competences. And I do not expect this kind of quality from an independent game, even though I'm aware that many commercial games are not well designed. In conclusion, there are many great ideas in ETO and I especially like the light/dark energy concept where you don't have to fight, but rather "avoid getting hurt or get hurt in the right way". The gameplay feels smooth and enjoyable and the storyline is very interesting and raises some questions about our human ambitions that become more and more relevant today. I also like the more unexpected parts like the non-westerly-stereotypical main characters, the hero that whose actions didn't matter in the face of the unavoidable and the kind of dissatisfying (but nonetheless great) ending that had a strong message.

[HolyThursdayBot]

My one question about the story: I think you only need to collect 4 emotions at the waterfall before entering the geome, and Aliph confirmed I could proceed when I collected 4 light. It's no problem to collect the 4 dark as well, but beyond the repetition of earlier dialogue and earlier themes (certainly worth seeing, since it works perfectly with pretty important themes of the game), is there any particular reason to? I.e. did it make a difference to the game besides reading all 8 sections of text? No problem if not, but curious.

Just wanted to say I think manyn of the criticisms listed in the thread accurately depict the game (i.e. it's somewhat easy, it's linear, the overall idea behind the story seems fairly direct and unambiguous), but I'm not sure I feel all of them are necessarily negatives.

I didn't really mind the easiness of the game - to some extent, I think it's worth noting when a game avoids making me feel bored while not killing me too frequently for not executing everything perfectly or not understanding a facet of a puzzle. I probably died once or twice a dungeon. If I had to choose a game to lose my memories of, and then be required to beat it in one try without dying, I might choose Even the Ocean. I probably wouldn't succeed - if nothing else, I'd miscalculate the "damage" done by an energized element and die by mistake - but I'd get a lot closer than in many games. I don't think Anodyne was really super difficult for the most part either (I haven't done the post-game yet) so I wasn't expecting Even the Ocean to require retry after retry. Making it optional to always min/max dark/light energy is also a good touch - theoretically, the game could have been made so you needed to constantly readjust just to complete a level, but instead you can mostly make use of it when you have the urge to gotta go fast. The extra levels may be different, since I didn't play them yet.

The only gameplay problem I can think of is that I think manually holding your shield in one direction functions a little strangely sometimes. I'm not sure because I didn't repeat these sections over and over, but there seem to be a few problems where passively holding a shield in the direction you're moving won't block some sort of obstacle or damage, but actively holding it will. I think the little guys that move along the ground with spikes on both sides are an example - I believe that if you hold your shield actively in one direction, you will bounce them away from you AND take no dark/light damage from the spike. But it seemed like if you, say, ran to the right and ran into one while letting your shield move automatically, even though your shield would be to your right, you would bounce the dude away but take dark/light damage. Might be wrong on this. In short: I think manually holding the shield in one direction sometimes is a little more effective in "defending" you than passively holding it in the same direction - I think the shield should work the same way if being held, say, to your right, whether manually or passively.

Other than the above, I think the game controlled pretty superbly, and I think that once I decided my course of action for a given screen, I was able to accomplish that course of action without bumbling or wondering if I had "misinterpreted" how to play the game and what was within Aliph's power to do. Occasionally it might take me a bit to figure out if I needed a bit more light energy to make a jump high enough, or a bit more dark to run faster or make a longer jump. Incidentally: dark energy seems "unfairly good" in some bizarre way since it seems more effective for horizontal jumps and horizontal running, while light energy is mostly good for vertical jumping. In the section where you collect emotions, Aliph does a tiny bit of vertical walking/running - clearly we need more of this.

The soundtrack was pretty good, too. I think my biggest complaint is that the ambient music tends to or always dies down when reaching the final portion of a "dungeon" where you have to plant those power rods. I think I understand the justification in terms of atmosphere, but ultimately these sections are long enough and occur frequently enough that I'd prefer some musical accompaniment to enhance my enjoyment as I play.

In general, I feel like even though there are jerks in the game, and some of them even are probably responsible for the crisis that occurs (scientist dude, Wodsnick or whatever), one doesn't get the feeling they would have been absolutely beyond hope of doing anything better had people figured things out a little sooner. I like to think the same can be said of many of us. I'm not sure the game's general message offers a truly unique take on environmental problems, etc, but I think it has a pretty gentle yet somber approach to developing its characters that's worthy of praise.

I'm not sure it's important for every moment of a game to be connected to experiences the player has already had. Plenty of parts of the story of Even the Ocean are pretty human and pretty regular/normal - it's not odd or problematic for the ending to be about something we don't regularly experience. The truth is that the basic idea of leaving a legacy is pretty essential to human experience - the epic of gilgamesh is the earliest example I can think of which deals with this w/in the story itself.

The acknowledgements of "you did it" aren't all the same, and the kinds of feelings with which they're delivered alters (look at how the mayor, yara, and the scientist guy act in different ways as Aliph accomplishes one goal and then another for three of the most consistently available examples). The mayor tends to get a bit more sincere; the scientist dude becomes less of a jerk, and a bit more willing to explain and justify himself (even if he turns out to be guiding things on a bad track), but at the same time is probably making worse and worse decisions (moving from just repowering reactors to trying to destroy the geomes and assuming doing just a little better than Karavold did will work well enough); Yara becomes more willing to question and wonder if things are on the right track.

One reason I think the side stories are rushed is that Aliph doesn't really have time to involve herself too much in them. It's not that she doesn't care, at times clearly she does, but she's pretty aware of the fact that she has some semblance of a schedule. If the devs had wanted to revisit the side stories or do more with them, one possible solution would have been to redirect Karavold back to the contintent whiteforge is on. In some way justify going back to the reactors to make weapons for the geomes instead of having us go to bomb shelters in Karavold. I don't really mind that they didn't. The Dolores section lacks closure, I think (aside from the fact that everyone there probably died at the end of the game) - I think it's pretty reasonable to not get complete closure on every bit of a story.

My weirdest/biggest complaint about the story is that Whiteforge shouldn't be in such an open area. Since construction is so vertically oriented, it would be better if it was like NYC or some such very consolidated city (on an island or whatever). That's no big thing, though.

I don't even remotely regret paying the price to play this. Because Steam has some very good games that are extremely low price, and the world has very good games that are free, I wouldn't choose this game as one of the absolute paragons of bang for your buck (there are games out there with incredibly good return there). But I think it was still a really good return.

[Halfshell]

I'll add in my feedback as well as this seems to be a feedback thread: Upon entering in the 'dream area' you come across a guy who forces a conversation. If you talk to him again the first dialogue option is that exact same conversation, the second option is a new conversation. It felt like it was designed for you to talk to him rather than him talking to you, but was later changed. Another thing that bothers me, is that when I go to Lera's house after a mission you just say "that's Lera's house" but as soon as you walk home you are forced into story time with Lera. It would feel alot more natural if going to Lera's house started that story time imo. There are alot of other parts like this, where it feels like the game 'doesn't want you to miss things' so it initiates a converation even though it would feel alot more natural to let the player initiate it themselves.

I'm a person that doesn't care for stories that much. Rather, its better to say that I prefer the story to be told by the world rather than the people living in that world. The world of this game, the enviroments, the random world map things you can interact with and the library do a great job of this. But all the conversations felt.. out of place? Pointless? I'm unsure. (edit: I should note that I'm generally unsure, not saying the conversations are actually pointless, but that I can't describe it adequately.) Almost feels like one part of the story, the dailogue, is Light whereas the other part of the story, the enviroment, is Dark. And both must be utter extremes with little interaction between them. If thats the case then this does a fairly good job of fitting that theme.