Never Alone Fox Tales DLC (Switch)

Never Alone is a beautiful game that told the story of a young girl and an Artic Fox as they explored the snow covered tundra around them. It also drew heavily on folk law and helped present a new set of stories from a different culture to the world. The recent Switch release brought this to a new audience so we are here to give you another gentle reminder to check out the game with this look at the included Fox Tales DLC.

Fox Tales is a three level addition to the main game and tells another story. This time the tale is one of the pair trying to rescue a small mouse that has been washed away by the spring currents. On their journey they encounter a huge monster mouse that is frightening people away from a lake and decide to defeat it so people will no longer be scared.

The game plays like the original but is more puzzle based and our two adventurers spend most of their time in the water or canoeing on top of it. The main role of the fox is now to move spirits around to cause fast currents to flow in different directions. The girl is mainly used to pick up rocks and then drop them so they bounce around to their destination aided by the movement of the spirits. It’s sort of a cultural marble run. 

It all works well and the story being told is both interesting and enjoyable. It’s not particularly difficult and certainly won’t last you more than an hour or so but it’s great to see the game taking on more folklore tales and putting them across in such a beautiful way. The new mechanics such as rowing the canoe and the new puzzles fit well also. If you liked the original you should really give this a try as it adds some new idea to the core game while remaining beautiful and magical as ever. 

Never Alone Arctic Collection Review (Switch)

In Never Alone you play as a small Inupiaq girl named Nuna as she sets out from her village one day and finds herself lost in a terrible blizzard. She stumbles upon a small arctic fox and together the two set out to return home. Along the way they become swept along in various stories from the folklore of the Inupiaq people in what is a puzzle/platform game that has a heavy dose of storytelling and a magical atmosphere not like anything else we’ve played before. The relationship between the two builds throughout as they simply can’t survive the environment without one another. This version of the game also contains the Foxtales DLC which will look at in more depth a little later. 

The game is a 2D platformer much in the mould of something like Limbo. Imagine Limbo with a more natural looking design and the black replaced with white and you wouldn’t be far off. As the pair of Nuna and the fox you must work together to make your way across the harsh landscape of Alaska. Nuna can run and jump and eventually gets access to an ice smashing bolas. The fox can scramble up walls and also talk to the many natural spirits that inhabit the world.

Many of the puzzles involve getting the fox into areas where he can then draw spirits back to help Nuna. Spirits generally take the form of birds that can be used as platforms or creatures that can be used to climb walls. The fox can also control trees and fish. It’s a nice mechanic and one that normally works well. You switch between the two characters with the press of a button or a second player can be brought in to help out. Together you need to overcome everything from polar bears and strong winds to breaking ice and even the odd menacing and magical creature.

Occasionally the computer AI will let you down and your partner will do something stupid and die but on the whole it didn’t stop our progress and there isn’t anything here that should cause you too much frustration in that respect.  The fact checkpoints are fairly generous also helped to keep the frustration low.

It’s hard to talk about the game without giving away much of its magic and surprises but we will say that you are constantly faced with something new to play with or overcome. Each chapter is distinctly different from the last and almost all of them introduce a new mechanic or toy to play with. This means that the game always remains fresh and is all the better for it. It has a fairly brief run time at about three and a half hours but it’s an experience that is far richer than the run time would suggest.

The whole thing is underpinned with some beautiful graphics and a haunting score and these combined with the howling winds make a perfect setting for the story and fill the whole game with a unique and wonderful atmosphere. The narrator of the story also does an incredible job of drawing you in and making you feel real empathy for a little girl and fox lost in the snow. The narration is done in the indigenous language which is a very clever choice as we don’t feel narrating in English would have had anywhere near the same impact. You can just imagine everyone huddled around a fire in the snow listening to him tell the tale.

Overall, Never Alone is a wonderful piece of storytelling tied to a very good platform/puzzle game. It’s an original take on a well-trodden genre that draws inspiration from a rich culture that many of us will know very little about. As such, it creates something unique and new for audiences to enjoy. It creates a world filled with magic and wonder and isn’t that something we all want in our lives a little more?

Overall 8/10

Never Alone:Foxtales DLC (PC)

Never Alone was a beautiful game that told the story of a young girl and an Artic Fox as they explored the snow covered tundra around them. It also drew heavily on folk law and helped present a new set of stories from a different culture to the world.

Fox Tales is a three level addition to the main game and tells another story. This time the tale is one of the pair trying to rescue a small mouse that has been washed away by the spring currents. On their journey they encounter a huge monster mouse that is frightening people away from a lake and decide to defeat it so people will no longer be scared.

The game plays like the original but is more puzzle based and our two adventurers spend most of their time in the water or canoeing on top of it. The main role of the fox is now to move spirits around to cause fast currents to flow in different directions. The girl is mainly used to pick up rocks and then drop them so they bounce around to their destination aided by the movement of the spirits. It’s sort of a cultural marble run. 

It all works well and the story being told is both interesting and enjoyable. It’s not particularly difficult and certainly won’t last you more than an hour or so but it’s great to see the game taking on more folklore tales and putting them across in such a beautiful way. The new mechanics such as rowing the canoe and the new puzzles fit well also. If you liked the original it’s well worth picking up this new set of levels and we certainly hope for more in the future.

Never Alone Review (PC)

In Never Alone you play as a small Inupiaq girl named Nuna as she sets out from her village one day and finds herself lost in a terrible blizzard. She stumbles upon a small arctic fox and together the two set out to return home. Along the way they become swept along in various stories from the folklore of the Inupiaq people in what is a puzzle/platform game that has a heavy dose of storytelling and a magical atmosphere not like anything else we’ve played before. The relationship between the two builds throughout as they simply can’t survive the environment without one another.

The game is a 2D platformer much in the mould of something like Limbo. Imagine Limbo with a more natural looking design and the black replaced with white and you wouldn’t be far off. As the pair of Nuna and the fox you must work together to make your way across the harsh landscape of Alaska. Nuna can run and jump and eventually gets access to an ice smashing bolas. The fox can scramble up walls and also talk to the many natural spirits that inhabit the world.

Many of the puzzles involve getting the fox into areas where he can then draw spirits back to help Nuna. Spirits generally take the form of birds that can be used as platforms or creatures that can be used to climb walls. The fox can also control trees and fish. It’s a nice mechanic and one that normally works well. You switch between the two characters with the press of a button or a second player can be brought in to help out. Together you need to overcome everything from polar bears and strong winds to breaking ice and even the odd menacing and magical creature.

Occasionally the computer AI will let you down and your partner will do something stupid and die but on the whole it didn’t stop our progress and there isn’t anything here that should cause you too much frustration in that respect. We also had a few technical issues during our play through like ice not smashing but there wasn’t anything major enough to ruin our experience and a simple checkpoint reset always fixed the problem. The fact checkpoints are fairly generous also helped to keep the frustration low.

It’s hard to talk about the game without giving away much of its magic and surprises but we will say that you are constantly faced with something new to play with or overcome. Each chapter is distinctly different from the last and almost all of them introduce a new mechanic or toy to play with. This means that the game always remains fresh and is all the better for it. It has a fairly brief run time at about three and a half hours but it’s an experience that is far richer than the run time would suggest.

The whole thing is underpinned with some beautiful graphics and a haunting score and these combined with the howling winds make a perfect setting for the story and fill the whole game with a unique and wonderful atmosphere. The narrator of the story also does an incredible job of drawing you in and making you feel real empathy for a little girl and fox lost in the snow. The narration is done in the indigenous language which is a very clever choice as we don’t feel narrating in English would have had anywhere near the same impact. You can just imagine everyone huddled around a fire in the snow listening to him tell the tale.

Overall, Never Alone is a wonderful piece of storytelling tied to a very good platform/puzzle game. It’s an original take on a well-trodden genre that draws inspiration from a rich culture that many of us will know very little about. As such, it creates something unique and new for audiences to enjoy. It creates a world filled with magic and wonder and isn’t that something we all want in our lives a little more?

Overall 8/10