Eastward (Switch) Review

Gorgeous Artwork in a Post-Disaster Story

The last decade of gaming has given birth to an era of new games steeped in retro inspiration. New techniques and tools in game development have allowed smaller teams to create incredible experiences while pushing nostalgic aesthetics to their limits. Undertale, Shovel Knight, and Stardew Valley have proven that there is still a massive demand for games that recapture that magic. Watching the trailer years ago, Eastward gave off strong Earthbound and specifically Mother 3 vibes. As a huge fan of those games, I was hooked and excited to play Eastward.

As a side note, I’m a big enough fan of Earthbound to have written a piece for a book coming out soon! Read that full essay as a preview for “100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1988–1998” in our features section.

Eastward starts after being treated to a very charming 2D animated intro featuring various characters and locations in peaceful and action-centric scenes. Eastward follows the story of John, an older “working Joe” type who comes across a little girl, Sam, down in the depths of a mine. He takes her in as his own and it’s soon clear that Sam adores John, and that John will go to great lengths to keep Sam safe. John is a stern silent type, while Sam is an excitable dream big type who believes in helping people. One of the key parts of Eastward is its setting as a post-disaster world where many people live underground or in extremely isolated communities. When Sam starts to talk about having been above ground and seeing green, people don’t believe her. Her desire to see for herself launches the two of them into a grand adventure that spans a string of cities along train tracks. This tale Involves government conspiracy, a spunky scientist, ghosts, and traveling thespians. Behind everything is a grand mystery that unfolds over time in a way that is very “kids on bikes” and it’s charming.

The gameplay of Eastward is top-down action following the tradition of classic Legend of Zelda games with quick attacks, various tools, weapons, and upgrades that are added over time to deal with specific situations and obstacles. Where the gameplay diverges from the Legend of Zelda formula is that players are usually controlling John and Sam at the same time and can hot-swap between the two.

The pair often need to split up and take different paths in order for both to make their way through an area. Certain enemies are better dealt with by John while others are handled best by Sam. John makes do with his trusty frying pan along with a gun, flamethrower, bombs, and a couple of other handy tools. Meanwhile, Sam has a mysterious bubble power that can freeze enemies in place and take care of specific situations. Areas are populated with enemies and fun puzzles that require creative problem solving to get through and some areas are surprisingly challenging in a good way. 

Eastward has some of the most stunning pixel art I’ve experienced. Everything feels alive and vibrant and retains a consistent style throughout a wide variety of colorful characters and drastically different environments. Exaggerated features and details of characters come through clearly, and color palettes make Eastward a really enjoyable game to look at. Eastward is also full of fun little satisfying animations that help give the cast more personality above and beyond their design. Walk cycles, facial expressions, laughs, and more all help bring the world of Eastward to life, adding to an already charming experience and making it feel like a more finished, premium experience. Sam’s little victory dance in particular is exceptionally endearing and cute. My only complaint is occasionally I’d see some strange visual artifacts at the top and bottom edges as if the screen I’m looking at is layered on top of a previous screen. This is exceptionally nitpicky and never impacted my overall experience.

In the end, I’ll note that because of Eastward's overall art direction and animation it became one of my favorite games to look at on the Switch OLED. I made the SWITCH to the OLED during my playthrough of this game and the colors in Eastward look so good!

On the audio side of things, the Eastward soundtrack has some bangers, and I’ve even added a few to my Spotify “liked” list to listen to on regular rotation. A few notable tracks are “Cooking”, “Sam”, “Ni Hao”, and “Bar”. Much of the soundtrack to me invokes similar satisfaction as listening to the Wii Shop Channel music. A short review would be that the music is excessively pleasant and I often found myself humming along while playing the game. So huge props to Joel Corelitz, who also has credits in the Halo Infinite soundtrack. The audio design is a tad less strong than its soundtrack but offers satisfying audio cues to correspond with many of the repetitive actions, and sounds added to moments appropriately to add to the tone of a scene.

Eastward also packs a little bit of a surprise by offering a “game within a game”. The kids in Eastward love to play a video game called Earth Born. Pixpil, the developers of Eastward, decided that it wasn’t enough to simply have it be a piece of in-world lore and included Earth Born as a fully-fledged video game that can be played within the game. Earth Born is clearly a love letter to classic retro JRPGs like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. You collect a party of heroes, delve into dungeons, fight monsters, and aim to take down an evil overlord. You play through till you die trying to finish the game in a single go, starting over each time with a few bits of progress carrying over. Earth Born adds a nice variety to Eastward’s offerings in terms of gameplay and visuals, feeling closer to an NES or Game Boy game than the rest of Eastward's hi-bit style. It’s not required, but is fun and adds to the overall experience that Eastward brings to the table.

Eastward is a gem of a title bringing wholesome storytelling, clever gameplay, and exceptional visuals that all hold their own even among the exceptional selection of indie titles currently available. The only thing that holds Eastward back is its struggles with pacing. All gameplay stops when it’s story time, and all story stops when it’s game time. This is a relatively small issue but there were definitely times where either the gameplay or the story dragged a bit too long before shifting back. Outside of that, I found Eastward to be a thoroughly enjoyable game and absolutely worth playing. I look forward to future projects from Pixpil and Chucklefish!

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 8.5/10

VISUALS - 10/10

SOUND - 8.5/10

CONTROLS - 9/10

REPLAY VALUE - 7/10

OVERALL - 8.6/10

A digital Switch copy was provided for the purposes of review. More information about Eastward can be found on the official website.