Playing Chucklefish's Eastward is like coming home to a place I've never been before. After its 2018 reveal, I was immediately drawn to the game's Zelda-like adventure elements, unusually colorful post-apocalyptic narrative, and motley crew of characters. But most of all, I was wowed by its gorgeous, highly detailed environments constructed entirely of pixel art. "What Eastward does best is create a world that feels like the games we played growing up," my brother said after the game's September 2021 release. It joins Extremely OK Games' puzzle-platformer Celeste and Eric Barone's mega-hit farming simulator Stardew Valley (also published by Chucklefish) in a rapidly growing club of video games tapping into nostalgia with high-end pixel art graphics and a retro aesthetic.

With "Eastward," the Shanghai-based developer Pixpil set out to make a Zelda-like game inspired by the Japanese role-playing game series EarthBound, and after more than five years of development, the quirky world set in a beautiful, retro 16-bit art style delivers on every stylistic inspiration. But the plot driving "Eastward" is confusing and drags in a few of the game's eight chapters. Some characters are complex and interesting; others are uncomfortable cliches -- like Jasper, the flamboyant one-man entertainer who's terrified of world around him. The result is a beautiful game with a lot of heart but no clear, coherent storyline and a few disappointing characters.

An unlikely pair of adventurers fight their way through a mysteriously crumbling world in Eastward. An unlikely pair of adventurers fight their way through a mysteriously crumbling world in Eastward. The most nimble game developers borrow. Like Shakespeare himself, they rummage through venerated titles crafted by the old guard and snag anything useful to them. They ask themselves "How can we create a game as inventive as Fallout, as artistic as Zelda and as gripping as The Last of Us?" Shanghai developer Pixpil's newest title, Eastward, is a triumph that stretches the standard for indie game development; it masterfully combines popular tropes from older titles and genres without feeling hackneyed and stale. It's no easy feat, but Eastward passes the test with flying colors (and pixels).