Eidolon (video game)

Last updated
Eidolon
Eidolon (Video game) cover art.jpg
Developer(s) Ice Water Games
Publisher(s) Ice Water Games
Engine Unreal Engine [1]
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows, macOS (some video cards only)
Release
  • WW: August 1, 2014
Genre(s) Adventure, Survival
Mode(s) Single-player

Eidolon is a first-person open world adventure video game with narrative and survival elements, developed and published by Ice Water Games. The game was released on August 1, 2014 for Microsoft Windows and macOS.

Contents

The player character travels through the wilderness and ruined cities of post-apocalyptic Western Washington, which is depicted using stylized, low-polygon graphics. While navigating this vast space, the player collects documents that reveal the stories of its previous inhabitants and the passing away of civilization; a key theme of the game is the potential for nature to outlast human activity. Although the player must obtain food and manage the risks of cold and injuries, these aspects of the gameplay were designed to be less challenging than in most survival games, to support a more relaxed mood and slower pace of exploration.

Eidolon obtained a mixed reception. While reviewers mostly appreciated its distinctive graphical style (which drew comparisons with Proteus ) and its narrative, some criticised the gameplay as too slow-paced or repetitive.

Gameplay

The player character holds a fishing rod next to a lake and campfire, with stylized trees and hills visible in the background. The floating green shape to the right marks a collectible document, while the icons in the lower left are status effect indicators. Eidolon (video game) screenshot.jpg
The player character holds a fishing rod next to a lake and campfire, with stylized trees and hills visible in the background. The floating green shape to the right marks a collectible document, while the icons in the lower left are status effect indicators.

Eidolon simulates the exploration of an open world from a first-person perspective. The extensive world map encompasses multiple biomes including forests, mountains and the remains of ruined cities, and walking across it requires hours of real time. [2] The graphics, which have been described as minimalist, [2] [3] feature stylized, polygonal objects, an absence of textures and a large draw distance. [2] The game world's appearance is affected by varying weather and a day-night cycle. [4] The game features a minimal HUD [5] with small icons to indicate status effects such as hunger and illness, [6] and most interaction is managed as part of the backpack interface. [5]

Navigation is a principal challenge for the player. The game initially provides no information about its geography or objectives, and although maps can be found within the game these do not indicate the protagonist's location. [4] The player must also attend to the protagonist's survival, which involves obtaining food, staying warm and treating injuries. [2] [7] Failure to satisfy material needs can lead to sickness and starvation. [7] However, a protagonist who reaches the point of death will be revived at a safe location with no loss of inventory items or any penalty beyond the time required to return to a previous location. [5] [8]

Several objects may be found to assist navigation and survival: a fishing rod, compass, bow and binoculars. [4] Unlike in many survival games, these tools are simply found and do not need to be crafted. [5] The game can present items in multiple locations depending on how the player chooses to explore. [9] In an article on Kotaku, Luke Plunkett discussed Eidolon as a development of the survival genre, noting that it was distinguished from earlier games in the genre by the easy and forgiving nature of the gameplay, as well as its "peaceful" atmosphere. [5]

Non-player characters do not appear directly, [10] but documents and images that they have left behind can be collected. Discovering the characters' personal stories allows the player to piece together the history of the area and the reasons for its present abandonment. Documents are accompanied in the viewing interface by tags identifying associated characters and locations, and clicking a tag reveals the direction of the nearest undiscovered document with the same tag. [4] [6]

Plot

Eidolon takes place in approximately the year 2400, according to the game's website. [11] The setting is a compressed and simplified representation of Western Washington, including the Puget Sound region and the Olympic Peninsula; the Kitsap Peninsula was added by a patch after release. [12] Victoria, British Columbia is also accessible via a road bridge from Port Angeles. The player begins in a forest between Bellevue and Olympia. [2] Gradual exploration reveals that the region is deserted and has largely reverted to wilderness, with its former cities reduced to overgrown ruins. Much of Seattle is underwater, while the other major cities are ringed by massive walls and littered with human skeletons.

The background to this desolation is revealed through documents and images that the player may collect in any order. It becomes clear that events were set in motion by the development of technology that increased human longevity. When an earthquake in 2031 flooded Seattle, it exposed deposits of a new mineral that was used to construct towering "Beacons" in cities around the world. Humans were nearly immortal while within range of a Beacon, but their biological dependence on the technology left them at risk of fatal withdrawal symptoms outside the cities. Responding to the massive movements of population and tension between supporters and opponents of the Beacons, many cities constructed walls, isolating themselves from each other and the rural population that continued to experience natural lifespans. This period also saw the rise to prominence of the Sennin, people with heritable mutations that granted innate immortality and superhuman abilities.

Growing conflicts and social breakdown culminated in "the Fall", a period around 2110 in which the destruction of Beacons by extremists left city-dwellers to die or flee to surviving cities, themselves diminishing in number and hostile towards refugees. Bellevue and Olympia fell at this time, while Victoria survived as a secluded police state for several decades longer. By the period in which the game is set, the rural communities in Western Washington that survived the Fall have disintegrated. In one series of letters, a Sennin named Triya reveals that she came to Washington long after the Fall in search of a cure for Beacon dependence for the world's few remaining cities; she eventually found this in Victoria, but its effectiveness is unknown.

Development and release

Eidolon's primary creator, Kevin Maxon, began work on the game as a thesis project while studying game design at Western Washington University, and it was then developed over 20 months by Maxon's company Ice Water Games. [2] Thematically, Maxon intended to contrast the transience of human civilization with the permanence of nature. [2] [10] This theme is reflected in the game's use of Walt Whitman's poem "Eidolons", which provided not only the title but quotations that appear when the protagonist sleeps. [2] [4] Maxon describes the game as "post-human" rather than "post-apocalyptic" because of the absence of human NPCs. [10]

The game's design, influenced by academic debate on the relative priority of systems and stories in video games, [2] was intended to separate its rule-based gameplay mechanics from the authored narrative of the backstory. [13] The player character was left unspecified to avoid potential conflict between the character's goals and the player's. To allow the player to develop "mid-sized" goals between their overall exploration of the world and small-scale movement, the developers added the binoculars and the system of direction indicators linked to tags. [12] The survival elements were designed to be minimal in order to allow relaxed exploration. [10]

The graphics were first planned as two-dimensional but changed to three-dimensional to provide the experience of viewing a distant horizon. [12] The lack of polygons and textures for in-game objects was originally intended to allow computers to render the game's expansive landscapes, but Maxon decided that this minimalist style was actually more attractive. [2] Although there is no seasonal cycle in the game, shifts in the color palette over the course of each day were intended to suggest the passage of seasons from spring to winter. [14]

A pre-release trailer in December 2013 drew attention from gaming media including comparisons of the visual style to that of Proteus . [15] [16] This early attention encouraged a Steam Greenlight campaign, after which Eidolon was released through Steam on August 1, 2014. [17] The game is available for Windows and Mac, but the Ice Water Games website warns of compatibility problems under OS X with some recent video cards. [11]

Reception

As of December 2016, Metacritic displays an aggregate review score for Eidolon of 64, representing "mixed or average reviews". [18]

Video game developer Jack de Quidt wrote a positive review for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, expressing his enjoyment of both the impressionistic graphics and the experience of navigation, "treating an open world as a great spatial puzzle". He especially praised the gradual pace of the game's revelations, concerning both the narrative and the details of the gameplay, and considered that spoilers could "rob this wonderful, strange game of its power". [4]

Writing for Kill Screen, Chris Priestman gave Eidolon a score of 62. Priestman praised the appearance of the game's "routinely poetic expanse" and noted his desire to "compulsively snap screenshots", while also noting that he encountered graphical glitches. He viewed the narrative as interesting from a philosophical and science-fictional viewpoint, finding an implied connection between the theme of immortality and the player character's own ability to survive seemingly lethal events. However, the review took a less favorable view of the mechanics of discovering documents, arguing that this was over-repetitive and detracted from the intrinsic pleasure of exploration in an overjustification effect. [6]

Radu Haulica's Softpedia review gave Eidolon three stars out of five ("poor"). In contrast to de Quidt, Haulica complained that discovering the narrative required excessive, tedious wandering, and also that the limited survival aspects provided insufficient additional reason for engagement. Haulica considered that although views of distant scenery could be effective, the minimal visual style and the "very limited and drab color palette" were generally unappealing. [3]

Related Research Articles

Survival horror is a subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and vision, or through various obstructions of the player's interaction with the game mechanics. The player is also challenged to find items that unlock the path to new areas and solve puzzles to proceed in the game. Games make use of strong horror themes, such as dark mazelike environments and unexpected attacks from enemies.

<i>Metro 2033</i> (video game) 2010 video game

Metro 2033 is a 2010 first-person shooter survival horror video game developed by 4A Games and published by THQ. The story is based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of the same name, where survivors of a nuclear war have taken refuge in the Metro tunnels of Moscow. Players control Artyom, a man who must save his home station from the dangers lurking within the Metro. In the game, players encounter human and mutant enemies, who can be killed with a variety of firearms. Players must also wear a gas mask to explore areas covered in fallout radiation, both underground and on the surface.

<i>The Last of Us</i> 2013 video game

The Last of Us is a 2013 action-adventure game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. Players control Joel, a smuggler tasked with escorting a teenage girl, Ellie, across a post-apocalyptic United States. The Last of Us is played from a third-person perspective. Players use firearms and improvised weapons and can use stealth to defend against hostile humans and cannibalistic creatures infected by a mutated fungus. In the online multiplayer mode, up to eight players engage in cooperative and competitive gameplay.

<i>Starbound</i> 2016 video game

Starbound is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Chucklefish. Starbound takes place in a two-dimensional, procedurally generated universe which the player is able to explore in order to obtain new weapons, armor, and items, and to visit towns and villages inhabited by various intelligent lifeforms. Starbound was released out of early access in July 2016 for Windows, OS X, and Linux, and for Windows via Xbox Game Pass in December 2020.

<i>BioShock 2: Minervas Den</i> 2010 video game downloadable content

BioShock 2: Minerva's Den is a single-player downloadable content (DLC) campaign for the 2010 first-person shooter game BioShock 2, developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. The player assumes the role of Subject Sigma, an armored and genetically modified human, or "Big Daddy"; Sigma must travel through Minerva's Den, the technological hub of the underwater city of Rapture, to download a schematic of the city's supercomputer. Gameplay is similar to that of BioShock 2, with new enemies and weapons.

<i>Gone Home</i> 2013 video game

Gone Home is a first-person exploration video game developed and published by The Fullbright Company. Gone Home was first released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux computers in August 2013, followed by console releases for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in January 2016, the Nintendo Switch in September 2018, and iOS in December 2018.

<i>Dying Light</i> 2015 video game

Dying Light is a 2015 survival horror video game developed by Techland and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The game's story follows an undercover agent named Kyle Crane who is sent to infiltrate a quarantine zone in a fictional Middle Eastern city called Harran. It features an enemy-infested, open-world city with a dynamic day–night cycle, in which zombies are slow and clumsy during daytime but become extremely aggressive at night. The gameplay is focused on weapons-based combat and parkour, allowing players to choose fight or flight when presented with dangers. The game also features an asymmetrical multiplayer mode, and a four-player co-operative multiplayer mode.

<i>Below</i> (video game) 2018 video game

Below is an action-adventure game developed by Capybara Games. The game was announced during Microsoft's E3 2013 press event, and was indefinitely delayed in 2016. It initially released on Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on December 14, 2018, with a PS4 port released in 2020. The game received mixed reviews upon release.

<i>Proteus</i> (video game) 2013 video game

Proteus is a 2013 adventure game designed and created by Ed Key and David Kanaga for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. In the game, the player traverses a procedurally generated environment without prescribed goals. The world's flora and fauna emit unique musical signatures, combinations of which cause dynamic shifts in audio based on the player's surroundings.

Rust is a multiplayer survival video game developed by Facepunch Studios. It was first released in early access in December 2013 and received its full release in February 2018. Rust is available on Windows and macOS. Console versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One developed in conjunction with Double Eleven were released in May 2021. Rust was initially created as a clone of DayZ, a popular mod for ARMA 2, with crafting elements akin to those in Minecraft.

<i>The Forest</i> (video game) 2018 first-person survival horror video game

The Forest is a survival horror video game developed and published by Endnight Games. The game takes place on a remote heavily forested peninsula, where the player character Eric LeBlanc must fight off cannibalistic monsters, while searching for his son Timmy after a plane crash. The game features nonlinear gameplay in an open world environment played from a first-person perspective, with no set missions or quests, empowering the player to make their own decisions for survival. Following a four-year long early access beta phase releasing in 2014, the finished game was released for Windows in April 2018, and for the PlayStation 4 in November 2018. The game was a commercial success, selling over five million copies by the end of 2018. A sequel game, Sons of the Forest, was released in Early Access for Windows on February 23, 2023.

<i>The Long Dark</i> 2017 video game

The Long Dark is a first-person survival video game developed and published by Hinterland Studios. The player assumes the role of crash-landed bush pilot Will Mackenzie who must survive the frigid Canadian wilderness after a geomagnetic storm. The game received seed financing from the Canada Media Fund, and further funding was secured through a successful Kickstarter campaign in October 2013.

Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games and/or platformers focused on guided non-linearity and utility-gated exploration and progression. The term is a portmanteau of the names of the video game series Metroid and Castlevania, based on the template from Metroid (1986), Castlevania II (1987), Super Metroid (1994), and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997).

<i>Ashen</i> (2018 video game) 2018 video game

Ashen is an action role-playing game developed by New Zealand studio A44 and published by Annapurna Interactive.

<i>Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist</i> 2015 exploration video game

Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is an adventure video game developed by Crows Crows Crows, a studio created by William Pugh, best known for his work on another video game, The Stanley Parable. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X on December 4, 2015 as a free offering. The game sets up expectations of participating in a narrative-driven story about a heist, but players instead find themselves helping out an unseen narrator before they can participate in the story.

<i>Devil Daggers</i> 2016 video game

Devil Daggers is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by indie development team Sorath. Players are tasked with surviving for as long as possible against swarms of demonic enemies on an arena shrouded in darkness. The player character can fire daggers from their fingers to eliminate foes and move about to avoid contact with them. The player dies upon touching an enemy, and as time passes, more threatening creatures begin to appear. Survival times are recorded on a global leaderboard where replays of playthroughs can be accessed and viewed. The deliberate use of unfiltered textures and effects like polygon jitter and texture warping make its visual style reminiscent of early 3D games released in the 1990s.

Kitty Horrorshow is the pseudonym of an independent video game developer. Releasing her games on the distribution platform itch.io, she specializes in the psychological horror genre, with her games focusing on surreal and atmospheric horror in the aesthetic style of early 3D videogames.

Fragments of Him is a video game developed and published by Sassybot and released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on 3 May 2016 and 1 June 2016, respectively. The PlayStation 4 version was released on 26 September 2017.

<i>Master X Master</i> 2017 video game

Master X Master (MXM) was a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by NCsoft.

<i>Viridi</i> 2015 video game

Viridi is a simulation video game developed by Ice Water Games. The game was released onto Microsoft Windows and OS X on August 20, 2015, and onto iOS and Android on June 20, 2016. The game tasks players to look after a pot of succulents. The game takes on a freemium model, meaning the game is free-to-play, but contains microtransactions.

References

  1. ↑ Ice Water Games (2014-08-01). Eidolon (Microsoft Windows). Ice Water Games. Scene: Splash screen. Unreal Development Kit
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Kelton Sears (August 26, 2014). "Eidolon Asks Us to Imagine a World Without Us". Seattle Weekly . Archived from the original on January 10, 2015. Retrieved December 25, 2020.
  3. 1 2 Radu Haulica (August 28, 2014). "Eidolon Review". Softpedia . Archived from the original on January 5, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jack de Quidt (October 21, 2014). "Eidolon Diary: Diarising Eidolon". Rock, Paper, Shotgun . Archived from the original on December 13, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Luke Plunkett (August 5, 2014). "Survival Games Are Moving Beyond "Zombies & Crafting"". Kotaku . Archived from the original on January 5, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 Chris Priestman (August 15, 2014). "Rumors from the forlorn: An Eidolon Review". Kill Screen . Archived from the original on June 17, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  7. 1 2 Danielle Riendeau (August 22, 2014). "Eidolon is the most beautiful game I've ever thrown up in". Polygon . Archived from the original on February 16, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  8. ↑ Nathan Grayson (August 7, 2014). "A Survival Game Where You Can't Actually Die". Kotaku . Archived from the original on January 8, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  9. ↑ John Walker (August 4, 2014). "Video: Slowly Starving To Death In Eidolon". Rock, Paper, Shotgun . Archived from the original on March 13, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Alexander Saeedy (July 24, 2014). "Eidolon imagines a life long after the end of man". Kill Screen . Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  11. 1 2 "Eidolon". Ice Water Games. Archived from the original on November 25, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  12. 1 2 3 Badru (2019). "Eidolon Post-mortem: The long story of Eidolon's making, and the (first) birth of Ice Water Games". Ice Water Games. Archived from the original on November 26, 2020. Retrieved December 25, 2020.
  13. ↑ Ice Water Games (September 9, 2013). "Why Eidolon Needs to Exist". Ice Water Games (blog). Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  14. ↑ Ice Water Games (January 27, 2014). "It's pretty big! When we first roughed it out..." Ice Water Games (blog). Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  15. ↑ Nathan Grayson (December 17, 2013). "Survivor: Proteus Edition – Eidolon Gets First Trailer". Rock, Paper, Shotgun . Archived from the original on January 18, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  16. ↑ Jason Johnson (December 17, 2013). "The outdoorsy Eidolon is more stunning than actual nature". Kill Screen . Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  17. ↑ "Eidolon on Steam". Steam . Archived from the original on November 21, 2016. Retrieved December 13, 2016.
  18. ↑ "Eidolon". Metacritic . Retrieved December 13, 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.