This week I’ve been playing (Or trying to play) Another Sight, an Indie game developed by Lunar Great Wall Studios and published by Fish Eagle. The game draws inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, and, undoubtedly, Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Incorporating some of the great minds of the late 1800s, early 1900s, such as Monet, Telsa and Edison, with such big inspirations this game is full of promises and potential

You play as Kit and Hodge, characters reminiscent of Alice and Cheshire cat. Kit is a bright young girl who falls through a hole in to a strange underworld London. She quickly realises that somethings not quite right with her sight, this is where Hodge comes into play. Kit soon meets the rather vocal, intelligent and friendly Hodge with his rather lovely heterochromiac eyes who becomes her vital companion. Gameplay works by swapping between the two characters in order to navigate the world. When playing as Kit your vision is limited to a small bubble, and you view the world around you in a rather impressionist way (Much like the artwork of Monet). Due to her limited sight Kit moves very slowly, a decision that at times seems tedious. Top tip Hodge leads a limited “footstep” trail that helps illuminate kits way and enables her to move faster, by swapping reasonably quickly between the two on a straight you can navigate the world a lot quicker. Kits Eyesight at times is amplified by noise around her, this seems to be highly selective though as you can be in a noisy environment yet still be inhibited. Hodge provides a real world view, an unencumbered oversight of the entire area.

Playing as Hodge however has its drawbacks. I started to refer to him as Cat Bandicoot due to his rather irritating jump physics. Honestly they are almost impossible and you have to be so precise in where you jump from. Many of the Jumps are engineered so that if you Jump from the edge of one platform you will wildly overshoot your target and plummet to your death. During the beginning of the game Hodge also makes a strange snoring noise almost constantly that I am quite thankful to say does not continue – As these two characters you move through the game solving various puzzles to progress; so far none of the puzzles have been too taxing… However I have unfortunately come to a point that I estimate to be maybe 20% through the game whereby a glitch is preventing my progression. Kit and Hodge simply fall out of the bottom of an elevator that I am trying to use, therefore I can’t really comment on the storyline, or even give a holistic review of the game itself. I also feel it important to note that as of yet, there is no way to customise the control buttons in game, something that could cause accessibility issues.

Visually the game is beautiful and despite the large disappointment of the game not functioning, I still find myself reluctant to write it off completely. As said before the stark difference between the impressionist world that Kit experience and the realistic one of Hodge is impressive and really shows off the creativeness of the developers, providing a nice juxtaposition between character experiences. Furthermore, it is clear that there has been a lot of thought put into the background environment of the game. Each level draws from its token icon (or rather the two I have managed to experience so far). Even the bubble aura that surrounds Kit changes, something that I thought was an especially nice touch.  I also enjoy the cut scenes that are done in a nice concept arty way, I love to see hand drawn almost comic book style scenes in a game. I feel as though it really adds to the game and I love seeing the characters drawn and not animated.

For those of you that like collectibles, Another sight provides this in the form of hidden purple orbs throughout the world. These provide you with extra information such as biographies, and they can be accessed on the start screen.

PROS
+ Beautiful cutscenes
+ Excellent use of historical figures
+ Good use of contrasting character viewpoints
CONS
 Hodge ‘Cat Bandicoot’
Game progression-preventing Glitches

Overall I think this game has a lot of potential, and I am really looking forward to a patch that will allow me to play the whole thing and enable me to update this review . As it stands I would have to score it maybe a 5/10 due to it not currently being playable for myself.

5.0 / 10