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Anodyne is a Zelda-style action-adventure game released in 2013 on Windows and Mac. It is the first release from Analgesic Productions. The company went on to make Even the Ocean. Missing from this longplay are the game over screen, which depicts Young waking up in a cluttered apartment, and the various secrets available after the main game. In retrospect, I should have explored around for them in this video, at least until I attained all the cards and reached the final gate, but I am far less familiar with the postgame areas. There is also one secret that requires (no joke) standing in place for a little under two hours. Anodyne is one of my favorite video games. It combines the gameplay, quirky humor, and ponderous atmosphere of Link's Awakening with the dread and self-exploration of Yume Nikki to great effect. The horror meshes oddly well with lovable, quirky characters like you would find in Link's Awakening. Albeit with a far more adult sensibility, featuring swear words and conversations about relationship anxieties. The music is wonderfully evocative and goes a long way to bringing life to The Land. That said, Anodyne is not entirely successful. The metaphors of Young's dream world are probably too opaque, although this does add considerable intrigue to the simplistic plot involving Young, Mitra, Sage, and Briar. Even after playing through Anodyne five or six times, I still couldn't really say what is happening beyond "Young explores a dream world in his mind," and the shockingly different Anodyne 2 brings even that premise into question. Also, why is the resolution so strange? Was Anodyne made for mobile?
