Eastward, the upcoming 2D RPG from 10-person Shanghai team Pixpil, is a lot of things. The tale of a gruff middle-aged man guiding a gifted young girl through an exquisite pixel-art post apocalypse, it's the disarming collision of The Last of Us and Earthbound, and it plays out something like Capcom's muscular takes on The Legend of Zelda on the Game Boy Advance. What's got me hooked after 30 minutes with a section plucked from just under a dozen hours into this adventure is how brilliantly it captures the look of that most extravagant era of 2D games.
Before that, though, there's a lot more Zelda going on in the way Eastward plays out too. The action is stripped back and there's a neat crunch to the combat, while the puzzles involve plenty of pushing of crates and bombing of rickety old walls. There's a certain twist provided by the dual character mechanic – miner John has a trusty frying pan to hand, and brings explosives into the mix, while young Sam has access to an energy blast that can light the way forward while also stunning enemies, with both switching in and out of the lead role at the touch of a button. You can also split the team apart to solve certain puzzles, and then bind them back together.
And from that foundation Pixpil is able to extrapolate a lot. In the short section I played there's a cooking mechanic that lovingly lifts from Breath of the Wild, a jeep racing mini-game and between all that some finely tuned dungeon crawling. I don't particularly want to go into too many specifics, because there's not that long to wait until the full and final thing – Eastward has been confirmed for release in just over a month on Switch and PC – but just take a small moment to appreciate the artwork that's perhaps the game's strongest suit.
