In video game post-apocalyptic setting usually revolve around grim and creepy ambient, dust, dusty ruin of what once great, and more dusts. But a cutely-named indie studio based on Shanghai, Pixpil, take a different approach towards the post-apocalyptic theme in their upcoming game Eastward, another pixel-art game with 10/10 visual quality to look forward to.

Eastward started by some sketches drawn by one of the team about "wierd monster dormitory building" The team brainstormed some ideas for a game they wanted to make out of it such as mobile puzzle game. Eventually they decided to make Eastward, a story-rich adventure RPG with puzzle-solving and dungeon elements, inspired by Mother and The Legend of Zelda series, with visual style aimed to achieve the feeling close to 90s anime.

Set in the futuristic world that has fallen to ruin and human population has shrunken to all-time low as strange creatures beginning to descend to the cities with the mysterious cause that yet to be told. Eastward follows the story of a hard-working digger named John who must guide Sam, a mysterious girl he found in a secret facility beneath his digging site, trough the dangerous decaying cities. They started their journey from their little underground village to the surface and discover what caused the world to be so dangerous. 

Since this game was inspired by anime, I get the feeling one of them are Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. You know, isolated underground village, uninhabitable and dangerous surface world, strange creatures, what-fate-awaits-on-the-surface trope. 

The interesting part of the game is that both John and Sam are playable characters, which you can switch between them on-the-go to solve puzzles. The world is filled with strange creatures and even stranger people.

Pixpil is so happy with the "quirky cast of characters" they are making that they put it in the features description, which means it's going to be one of the most standing out aspect of this game for gamers to remember it by. I really like the sound of that. To me, memorable gaming experience only gets stronger when it happened with memorable characters. 

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Not only in that particular fictional genre does Pixpil take a different approach, but also in their visual design technique. This is the second most interesting thing about the game. If this has never seen in video game before, Pixpil could make bigger mark in the gaming industry by the experiment they're doing with the game's visual design; combining 2D pixel-art with modern 3D lighting effect, as if that pixel-art isn't super gorgeous already. 

Prove it to be amazing in the final build, and other studios might as well follow their step, which I assume will probably happen pretty much like the battle royale genre. 

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As you can see in the announcement trailer, there are different ways for the action to happen, along with the combat gameplay. That's not a clear enough footage to see that, but enough to make me decide that this game looks very interesting and keeping an eye for it. For now, Eastward's release date is still unknown, but it's planned to be released on PC and Mac. Demo. We need demo. That'd be a great bad idea I'm sure of it. 

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Images credit: Eastward.

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^{DISCLAIMER: All artworks in this post (except for the cited ones) are belongs to me and I don't allow you, your partner, your cassowary, or your waifu to use them without my consent. Think I'm a smug? Fine by me. Happened before. Hate it if it happen again.}