Main characteristics

1. Genre – side platformer with puzzle prevalence
2. Main gameplay focus – Cooperation game
3. Plot and setting – Inuit myth of travel and return (Propp's magic tale)
4. Experience – Cinematic-sensual
5. Unity engine

MDA

1. Sensual pleasure-oriented game (visual, sound, cutscenes)
2. Game-fantasy (northern mythology, Propp's fairy-tale analysis)
3. Fellowship – cooperation is the main element of gameplay

Here I would like to summarize mechanics and sensual impressions of Never Alone on the basis of my experience. First of all, let's start from the main characteristics of the game. This is a side-platformer with a puzzle focus, oriented on a cooperation, based on the Inuit mythology, which gives a cinematic-sensual experience and developed in Unity. These elements construct a basis of the gameplay, background for the aesthetics and engine limitations. Turning to a deeper analysis within mechanics-dynamics aesthetics framework, I define Never Alone as a sensual-pleasure game, with fantasy narrative and some fellowship elements.

From a storytelling perspective, the game is based on the Inuit folklore, and accordingly gamedesigners aimed to develop mechanics and narrative, which provide an experience of the folklore tale.

We can define components, which were used as key mechanics of the game and at the same time, these elements aesthetically represent tropes of the fairy tale in accordance with Propp's morphology. Therefore, in my analysis I aim to demonstrate, how the folklore was transformed to the narrative by which I mean an individual story and experience that player receives within and after the game.

The main element of gameplay is a cooperation between a hero, Nuna, and the Fox, a magic assistant or donor in Propp's terminology. In gameplay terms, Nuna and Fox have different abilities in movement and interactions, therefore levels can be done only in cooperation with another player or AI. Thus, spirits that lift heroes horizontally or veristically are visible only if the Fox stands nearby or if their collisions detect each other. Since the camera is fixed, a level designer actively uses bottlenecks to keep players together in one space.

For example I draw a whale level, which shows how designer uses geometry to bound players with different abilities in a tiny space, and how the level is split on three phases that depends on the land-water physics.

The space itself sets up physics and logic, increase/decrease the dynamics and provides a background for the aesthetical elements. Never Alone offers five kinds of space. Firstly, the day, which is a human realistic space, consist of different snow, ice and water. During the day a level applies realistic physics, realistic mesh of various kinds of ice – damageable or not, and provides basic mechanics of mobility and interaction. The night shows a hostile space of spirits. These levels have more dynamics as they have traps and objects that can damage. A level inside a whale has three phases, which open each other though changing physics – from land to water and mobility from walking to swimming. A blizzard level and boss levels offer a chase that increase dynamics dramatically and force players to learn the landscape quickly in order to reproduce input correctly to finish in time. I also distinguish a Giant level because of vertical orientation and more dynamic environment, which generate traps. Also, since it is a myth focused on a journey and return, these levels are repeat in the end with a blizzard chasing that change slow dynamics of the journey to a fast time-limited escape. Therefore, developers didn't have to create additional levels, but added a chasing mechanics instead. At the same time, it continues a mythological narrative, an idea of returning, but under stressing conditions for a player. Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole. In the words of Jan Tschichold, "methods and rules upon which it is impossible to improve, have been developed over centuries. To produce perfect books, these rules have to be brought back to life and applied."
Front matter, or preliminaries, is the first section of a book and is usually the smallest section in terms of the number of pages. Each page is counted, but no folio or page number is expressed or printed, on either display pages or blank pages.

Objects in Never Alone are the part of the narrative, as they place a player into the northern aesthetics and give an impression of the living world both helpful and hostile, which is one of the key mechanics of the game. Accordingly, a designer sets parameters for objects, such us can be damaged? Can damage? Can move? And Is Visible? These objects, such as winds and mobile spirits are parts of the puzzle that should be solved to continue a journey.

Therefore, I think, Never alone is a good example of an adaptation of the myth, based on tropes defined in folkloristics, - such as living world, magic donor, travel and return, - into game mechanics. For achieving this, the game applies a linear story, bottlenecks in level design, and the narrative design, which insists on an experience of a cooperation and interactive environment.