Indie Game of the Week 459: Sephonie

I'd been looking forward to playing something else from Analgesic for a while—they were behind the two Anodyne games, neither of which I would call "predictable" despite some familiar graphical trappings—because they're unique in finding ways to marry unusual, deeply philosophical narratives with more conventional gameplay models that, once you'd dug into them a bit, had this sort of homespun vibe to them that felt purposefully peculiar compared to the common game design that had been honed and perfected elsewhere. That maybe sounded a little backhanded and it's meant to: the way the Anodyne games felt, along with this one, is purposefully disjointed in a fashion that is still perhaps more endearing than it is off-putting. That remains as true as ever with their second-most recent (as of writing) game Sephonie, that like Anodyne 2 has opted for a 3D platforming base with a distinct mini-game mode that transpires whenever you bond with one of game's many ancillary characters. In Sephonie's case specifically, it all ties into an academic expedition to a mysterious island just off the coast of Taiwan and the various flora and fauna you encounter there.

The story, in more detail, involves a three-person research team comprised of Amy, the confident and work-focused American leader of the team; the more analytically-minded Riyou from Japan; and the considerate if introverted Ing-wen from the nearby nation of Taiwan as they reach the shore of this island somewhat worse for the wear due to an unusual electromagnetic barrier surrounding the island taking out their ship. They're eager to try out a new piece of technology their organization had been working on—ONYX, a neural implant capable of creating links between living organisms to facilitate a greater exchange of information—with the various unique plants and animals that the island calls home. Soon after they arrive though, the barrier proves to be potentially the least of their problems as well as the least of the island's mysteries. If you're a fan of the movies Annihilation or Arrival this game kinda sits in the midpoint between the two, at least in terms of subject matter while lighter than both in tone, and the way the game plays around with the idea that the island itself appears to be learning more about humans from carefully examining the memories of the trio whenever they link with one of the island's more ecologically-pivotal creatures the more it starts to warp reality around them into something eerily familiar as a means to communicate. I daren't go into any more detail than that other to suggest a similarly trippy narrative that continues to snake and pivot as the party goes ever deeper underneath the island and learns more about both it and each other in the process.

The game's ethereal look (and soundtrack) are typical Analgesic, opting for the stylistic over the graphically intensive.

For the gameplay, it quickly introduces a set of 3D platforming mechanics that aren't so much about ever-increasingly taller jumps but a mix of wall runs, mid-air dashes, and wall hops. A typical maneuver might be to run across a wall until you get close to the platform on the other side, leap off, then hit the mid-air dash as you get close to the side of that platform for a bonus double-jump that should be enough to get you on top of it. The levels, which are ever deeper layers of the cave network beneath the island, also introduce a lot of environmental trickery like a pod plant that grants you a higher jump that you can wait to "cash in" by avoiding jumping until you reach the spot where it's needed, or a type of breakable wall that can be reformed by finding the right node—you might need to break it, find the node to fix it on the other side of it, and then jump on top of the newly fixed platform from there to make progress. These are all tools to be picked up on intuitively but there's plenty of optional items and creatures to link to that might require either some fancier platforming skills to reach or else will require backtracking after acquiring the ability you need later in the story, similar to an exploraction game. It did take a little while to get used to the controls and the emphasis on speed, momentum, and using wall runs to clear gaps instead of just leaping across but it became second nature in no time: something about the way it controls reminded me of Rittzler's Pseudoregalia and how its floatiness presented a lot of inertia early on when learning its ropes that soon gave way to intuitively gliding through the game's later challenges. If Sephonie has one failing here it's in having the photo mode be activated by pressing the left analog stick by default; given how easy it is to accidentally click in that stick in moments of stress it messed up a lot of jumps before I went into the bindings menu to fix it.

The other half of the gameplay involves the ONYX biological linking mini-game: these play a bit like inventory Tetris, dropping shapes comprised of colored blocks into a grid where several squares might have some unique properties that could either help or hinder your efforts. For example, there are rocks that need to be broken by placing pieces next to them first, or squares that might automatically transform pieces placed on them into different colors (you have three: green, red, and blue) or remove them entirely. The idea here is to keep placing pieces of the same color next to each other like dominoes to rack up combos and then eventually cash them all in once you either run out of space to put down pieces or run out of pieces (each new bond gives you a new piece as further incentivization to go after as many of the optional links as possible) and this will result in a number of points based on groupings of three or more blocks of the same color, with any remainders moving over to the next round. The higher your score, the closer you get to filling the gauge and successfully finishing the mini-game; if you fail to earn enough points in a single round, however, you'll lose one of your two health points and losing both will mean having to start the mini-game over. I wasn't sure what to make of this puzzle mode at first since it seemed deceptively basic but the number of different variables it introduces by way of those conditional squares have made a huge difference in keeping this mini-game fresh throughout, giving you an easy ride one moment and then throwing you for a loop the next. It's also different enough from the core gameplay that the two modes never step on each other's toes: you're happy to see one after spending a while on the other, and vice versa.

Tetris truly is the universal language.

I said in the lede that this is Analgesic's second-most recent game—their most recent being the Ys VI-inspired Angeline Era that came out just a few months back—and playing Sephonie for this edition of IGotW was in some way an effort on my part to catch up on their back catalog (along with their 2016 2D platformer Only the Ocean at some point) before I allow myself to play that new game because... man, I can never have enough Ys or proxYs in my life. In spite of those ulterior motives however, Sephonie really stood out as an excellent and strange and excellently strange example of an Indie 3D platformer that isn't simply content to try to chase Mario's whiskers through similar obstacle courses of monsters and lava traps to far lesser effect than what the geniuses at Nintendo HQ tend to put out there but instead uses those mechanics as a basis to tell an engaging story about human interconnectivity, memories, and our role in the natural order and it's enough to encourage players to attempt all these tricky running and jumping sequences purely to dig deeper into this trio by finding lore items and additional friends to link with, all the while side-stepping the unnecessary inconvenience that comes from harsh checkpointing or limited lives. It's an insightful character study posing as a 3D platformer with a zoologist framework that seeks to both support and subtly subvert John Donne's affirmation that "no man is an island". I wouldn't have expected to see this particular genre used in such a narrative-focused manner but after this and Anodyne 2 I've come to appreciate that Analgesic has a habit of breaking the mold.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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