Sephonie’s environments are visually overwhelming cave systems formed from gravity-defying platforms, twisting tree roots, and later, impossible geometry influenced by the explorers’ own memories.Īmy, Riyou, and Ing-wen discover themselves as they delve into Sephonie’s caves. You’ll sprint, air-dash, and wall-run through massive subterranean environments dotted with all manner of surreal architecture, being careful not to fall into the gaping pit ever beneath your feet. Most of your time in Sephonie is spent exploring the caves beneath the island through good old-fashioned platforming. The ways their upbringings mirror and diverge from each other become increasingly crucial to their mission as they delve into the heart of the island. The researchers - Amy Lim of the U.S., Riyou Hayashi of Japan, and Ing-wen Lin of Taiwan - are all of Taiwanese descent. As the game opens, three researchers arrive on the remote Sephonie Island to catalog its animal species, only to be immediately shipwrecked. You play through Sephonie as three different characters, mechanically interchangeable but each with distinct and richly drawn personalities. It excels as both a platformer and a puzzle game, but what makes Sephonie a Game of the Year contender even against heavyweights like Elden Ring is how its mastery of familiar gameplay tropes ties into one of the best video game stories ever created. Sephonie’s touching, surreal story is one of the best in video games. Also like Anodyne 2, Sephonie complements its reinvention of old-school game mechanics with clever, gently absurd writing that can have you laughing out loud at one moment and taking a long look in the mirror the next. Sephonie is similarly split between much more robust 3D platforming and short puzzles that take cues from match-3 games and Tetris. The two-person studio’s previous game, Anodyne 2, featured its first forays into 3D platforming, mixed with 2D segments reminiscent of A Link to the Past and other top-down RPGs. It’s generally not a place for loftier existential questions like, do I deserve the advantages I have? Am I doing enough for future generations? What really defines a nation, anyway? These heady topics probably won’t occur to you during an average Mario playthrough, but they form the backbone of Sephonie, the latest game from Analgesic Productions. How do I make this jump? Is there a collectible hidden here? What does this new ability let me do? There are certain questions you expect to ask while playing a 3D platformer.

Maximo sephonie