Puzzling (Mis)adventures Volume 14: Never Alone, Last Inua

Last Inua

At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Glowforth’s Last Inua was created off the same design document as Never Alone. Both tell stories of an Inuit youth on a deadly quest through the Arctic; both are side-scrolling puzzle-platformers with two playable characters, each with their own skill; and a healthy dollop of mysticism along the way. But make no mistake: these are otherwise two very different games, and Last Inua quickly manages to carve out its own identity. And what it lacks in educational value, it tries to make up in peyote-fueled surrealism… Okay, I’m joking about that last part – wrong region, wrong culture, there’s no trace of drugs to be found, and I’m not making fun of Aboriginal spiritualism, which I genuinely find fascinating. But the fact remains, this is one psychedelic game.

Minds will be blown immediately when you’re addressed in the dark by a glowing triangle that speaks like Alvin and the Chipmunks recorded and played backwards in gibberish. These voices inform you (thank goodness for subtitles) that the world is being consumed by a dark infection of fear from Tonrar, ancient destroyer and enemy to the spirit Keepers, and that only young Hiko has the necessary gift to oppose him. The problem is that Hiko’s gift is overwhelming him, leaving him weak and vulnerable in the middle of his Rite of Passage. He’ll need his father Ataataq’s help in order to visit the Keepers, collect their spirit orbs to restore them, and defeat Tonrar once and for all.

Once father and son are underway, it’s clear that Ataataq will indeed need to do all the heavy lifting. He can jump, break down moderate-sized ice blocks and move larger ones, and climb walls with his trusty ice picks. The frail, red-scarfed Hiko can run, albeit slower than his father, but he can’t jump at all, only hoist himself to slightly higher ledges. Though physically inept, however, his spiritual gifts are impressive. He is followed by a bright orb that allows him to build bridges of traversable light over select chasms, and his  teleport – sorry, teleflight – ability lets him move instantly from predetermined light portal to light portal to reach otherwise inaccessible areas and escape imminent danger.

Surprisingly, this is far less of a co-operative game than it is two alternating halves that form a whole. More often than not, Ataataq and Hiko will separate and make their own way before meeting up again past the current obstacles. The son sometimes needs his father to smash or move ice that is obstructing his path, but then it’s back to more solo efforts. Only rarely does father depend on son, but when together Hiko’s bridge-making ability is occasionally the only means of passage.

In a nice touch, both characters will automatically stop when they reach certain points and call out to their partner, indicating that they can’t go any further on their own, either because of an obstacle that requires help or because they’ve gone as far as they’re willing to without the other catching up. Still, it seems an odd choice to have a game with two playable characters so frequently disconnected from each other, especially because the family bond is supposed to be an integral element in giving the story some emotional heft.

There are some dangers to beware, but the threats are fairly straightforward. There are black puddles that periodically spurt infected goo (only after giving a telltale warning of imminent eruption), lethal pits, crumbling platforms, the odd heaving walls, and a few different types of patrolling enemies. Whether the burly, red-skinned furry men (abominable snowmen?), transparent ghosts or skeletal wolves on hind legs, these enemies aren’t too numerous or fearsome. They’ll kill you instantly if they catch you, but they lumber rather slowly, can’t jump high ledges, and apparently aren’t very bright, so avoiding them or luring them out of harm’s way is generally pretty easy. Once in a while you’ll also need to avoid growing black infection spots in the sky, which will overcome you if you stay idle too long in their presence. In some scenes you’ll need to fend off the cold as well. Stray too far from a fire and you’ll freeze, though this seems designed more to add tension than actual peril, as I never succumbed to the Arctic chill.

If you do die you simply start again at the nearest checkpoint, which is typically close by, though it can be annoying when you need to repeat both characters’ sections because one is killed. For the most part, though, the challenge (as lightweight as it is) is simply to figure out how to get both characters to the end of the level, rather than requiring a high degree of skill to do so. The exceptions are the three sequences within the realm of the spirit Keepers, in which Hiko must propel himself through a low-gravity environment lined with deadly spikes in order to collect light orbs. These aren’t overly difficult, but they may take a few attempts at first, and you must start over from the beginning each time you fail.

Regardless of the character, getting around isn’t too difficult given the minimal means of interaction available. The game uses the standard WASD (well, really only WAD) keyboard scheme, but a controller feels far more natural. Response time is fairly sluggish – both Hiko and Ataataq move quite slowly at the best of times, and you may curse how interminably long it takes them to pull themselves up a short ledge with an enemy hard on their heels. Both can survive surprisingly large drops, but Ataataq has a frustrating tendency to roll on landing. This may be good form, but not when he tumbles you right into harm’s way. Fortunately, fine precision is rarely needed, so progress won’t often be impeded by control foibles.

The so-called puzzles won’t trip you up very much either. It’s often not really clear what you need to do, but the options are so limited that there’s nothing a little exploring won’t inevitably solve. Apart from some vertical maneuvering, the action moves constantly to the right, so if you keep making your way in that general direction, you’ll either reach your goal or an impasse that requires switching to the other character with a simple keystroke or button press. Each level is very short, but they start to feel very repetitive due to the lack of variety. While many games introduce new obstacles and new abilities as you progress, here you’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see in the first few levels.

Ataataq’s skills are fairly basic – he’s the muscle, so everything he can do has already been done a million times before. That leaves Hiko’s spiritual gifts, which are intriguing but ultimately underwhelming. The teleflight ability seems practically pointless. It’s vital for getting Hiko out of jams, but there’s nothing more to it than hitting a key or button to move quickly from portal to portal, which only appear in his immediate vicinity when needed. There’s no thinking, no aiming, no strategy whatsoever. A little timing is required in the later levels, but nothing of any consequence.

That leaves the light bridges, which are very manual, almost to a fault. A mouse is preferable to a controller’s D-pad here to use Hiko’s spirit orb by physically moving it across the path you wish to create. If successful, it will sprinkle light into a bridge that you can then cross. Good idea, but two problems: first, bridge locations are entirely pre-scripted, so you can’t experiment and the orb will leap forward to indicate where one can be built, removing any question before it’s even asked. Secondly, the orb controls can be a little finicky, and if you don’t smoothly guide it from start to finish, you run the risk that Hiko will involuntarily rush headlong to his death by falling through a gap in the bridge. The bridge eventually dissipates, too, and Ataataq likes to stop before getting off, so you’ll often need to nudge him the rest of the way yourself. Even with its quirks I liked the bridge concept, but it’s under-utilized as an actual puzzle-solving mechanic.

Other than the spirit world levels, that’s it for gameplay variation, and there isn’t much more graphic diversity either. Last Inua is a very nice-looking game, just a little too samey for its own good, with a couple notable exceptions. The cutscenes are done exclusively through stylish still paintings, and the in-game cartoon aesthetic is very appealing at first, the white snow contrasting smartly with the turquoise-tinted skies with vague outlines of rock formations, stilt houses, bird skulls, and animal totems in the background. Whenever lightning flashes, sudden glimpses of the menacing giant Tonrar are illuminated in the dark. An hour and many levels later… you’ll be seeing the same things and won’t be nearly as impressed.

There is some variety later on, as evening turns to night and a yellow haze descends from the starry sky to a stony land filled with polar bear imagery. Then the game really goes for broke as the protagonists enter a giant bear, the second of three spirit Keepers. Best not to question the dodgy anatomy, but it’s delightfully perverse to wade through the pinkish caverns, veins and pulsing globules lining the walls, burbling green acid threatening death (or digestion) below crumbling platforms. Your footsteps skoosh through the moistness beneath you as you dodge crushing teeth, a far cry from the usual sounds of wind and crunching snow outside. There’s also an icy blue-ish cavern to briefly explore, but then it’s back to more turquoise, punctuated only by different accents – some of them admittedly cool, like the fossilized remains of fish, crustaceans, and even a prehistoric water dinosaur.

One clever touch occurs when your character begins to freeze. The edges of the screen start to frost over with a very painterly effect, continually closing in on the protagonist in the center. There are even cracks that appear, as if the camera viewing the action is beginning to shatter from the cold. The sound, too, becomes increasingly muffled the colder you get. I’m not sure whether this is meant to suggest a physiological loss of hearing or the hidden sound equipment freezing over; neither explanation makes any actual sense, but it’s a neat effect to alert you that something is very wrong and only getting worse.

Apart from the characters occasionally calling out to the other, the intermittent garbled sci-fi narration, and the ambient sounds of a frozen winter tundra, the rest of the audio is filled by periodic tonal music meant to provide atmosphere more than melody. Like with Never Alone, I didn’t find this to be particularly ethnic-sounding, so either the Inuit listen to very different music than I imagined, or the developers decided that a more traditional Native soundtrack didn’t suit the platforming experience.

With so few obstacles or dangers to pad out play time, Last Inua is a short game, taking well under three hours to complete. There are some collectibles in the form of “spirit runes”, which are simply white orbs tucked away in harder-to-find places. But there’s absolutely no incentive to find them. They serve no practical purpose, nor unlock any extras. A bell simply chimes to let you know that you’ve accomplished… something. If this pointless extra errand matters at all to you, you can replay any level you’ve already completed from the load screen, though I didn’t bother, so I can’t say for sure whether there’s a bonus for actually collecting them all.

The ending is meant to have dramatic emotional resonance, but I’m afraid I felt almost nothing. There’s too little to foster the father-son relationship; too little exploration of the characters along the way. Heck, father and son don’t even react when the other dies in their presence as you play. That’s not to say the endgame feels cheap or manipulative – the game is clearly building towards its narrative climax throughout, and the outcome is not out of place. But without the requisite personal investment to that point, it just doesn’t have nearly the impact that’s obviously intended.

For what it is, Last Inua is a solid enough little game. It’s low on both challenge and variety, but it looks and sounds pleasant enough, and is steeped in enough surreal mysticism that the experience feels oddly compelling. Its simplicity perhaps reflects its mobile origins, but even on PC it’s a diverting way to spend a couple puzzly-platforming hours. You won’t learn much about Inuit culture from playing it, but you might just be intrigued enough to want to discover more on your own. It’s not a long journey, but it’s definitely quite a trip.