Finished up Even the Ocean today--wonderful game from one of the current best tiny development teams. The narrative structure is surprisingly similar to the two Anodyne games where there's an overarching story but the individual levels are more focused on smaller-scale stories, some of which deal with pretty complicated themes in interesting ways, although I think they could've benefitted from being a bit longer or more involved. The platforming never gets very tricky and it was much less puzzle-focused than I expected but the last four or five levels push things a bit further and are super fun. Great 'gamefeel' throughout too. There are also a load of accessibility options, including the choice to play just the story or just the platforming segments, which seems really novel and bold to me. I know the post-game/dev commentary is really extensive and highly-regarded so I'm planning on diving back into that pretty soon.
Recommend it very highly as a super-polished platformer with wonderfully evocative visuals and sound, and a gently somber atmosphere that takes a few lovely dips into surrealism. Without being too specific about the plot and themes, those aspects are.....still very relevant to the current moment. It's also still on sale for a couple more weeks!
Anodyne 2 is still scheduled to receive a port sometime this year as far as I know---it was my favorite game of last year and I think it does a lot of what EtO does even better, and has loads of new ideas too, so I'm really looking forward to getting to play it again on Switch.
