I often finish an episode of a Telltale game thinking it was great, and that I had better tell everyone about it right away because it's stupid that they're not playing it. But then a few minutes later someone actually asks me about it and doubt busts in. I'm not sure if "it was great" or "it was good" or "it was alright" and the dialogue timer is ticking down, so... "It was grolright?"

I find it so hard to criticize Telltale's recent adventures because they do so little of what I'm used to valuing in games. Tales from the Borderlands is a Telltale adventure game in the style of The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us: I occasionally walk around clicking on objects for some flavor text, use WASD when prompted to avoid danger, click on guys whose faces I want to smash or shoot, and tap Q repeatedly to do some other stuff. There's choice, too—I get to pick dialogue and a few actions—but it feels more like pushing a morality needle a little bit in either direction than actually going down a branch in a path.

More than anything, Tales from the Borderlands values its writing, voice acting, and animation. I typically value rules and simulation. I like solving puzzles, mastering movement, intuiting ballistics, strategizing—anything where I have to optimize my input to be rewarded with the output I want. There's lots of that in the Borderlands series, but not in Tales from the Borderlands. And yet I don't think Tales from the Borderlands was just grolright. Maybe it wasn't great, either, but it was really, really good. I like it better than Borderlands, and that's a little uncomfortable. 

To be fair, I never really cared for Borderlands. I don't dislike it. It's a wacky bash-a-bandit goofabout, fun in co-op. I've always found its humor rubs against obnoxious a bit more than "ha ha," though.

Tales from the Borderlands, however, is funny. I for real laughed, with my throat making noises and everything. And it's not just Borderland's wriggling psychos and dubstep (I mean, that stuff is there) but characters that made me laugh because they're properly funny human people. I like them. I think they're cute. I seriously want to find out what happens to these people. On Pandora. The space world of Borderlands that I have never really cared much about.

The first episode of Tales from the Borderland also feels much bigger than any of Telltale's previous opening episodes. It's a little over two hours long, it hits a bunch of locations, it's told from two perspectives, and it introduces four main characters and several side characters. It's a really neatly presented pilot, and you don't have to know much of anything about Borderlands to enjoy it.

And whether or not my choices 'matter' (I'll compare my story to someone else's after the next episode, though it feels a bit like ruining a magician's illusion out of spite), it matters to me that I'm making them. It'd be flippant to call Tales from the Borderlands an 'interactive movie' because it's not like watching a movie at all. My role feels creative, even when I'm just selecting the joke I want my character to say. I feel like I'm taking risks, too. If I want two characters to bond, there's a sort of puzzle to it, where I have to read their personalities and the situation and predict how they'll respond to each other. It's not challenging to any degree, or something I can fully fail—more like a fun activity I invent for myself as I test the characters' wants and limits.

Minor spoilers ahead

If you don't want to know anything about the story, this is the part where you should stop reading anything I'm writing. But I won't reveal anything too big.

Tales of the Borderlands stars two characters: Rhys, an employee of the Hyperion corporation based on the moon above Pandora, and Fiona, a con artist who works with her sister on the planet. When Rhys is screwed out of a promotion and humiliated, he heads to Pandora with his best friend to take revenge on his boss by buying a vault key (one of the most valuable things ever, if you're not familiar with the universe) out from under him, and they cross paths.

At least in this episode, both of their stories are told as they recount them to a masked captor, disagreeing with each other about the details along the way. It gets especially entertaining when Fiona tells part of the story Rhys has already told, revealing what was going on behind the scenes while the choices I already made as Rhys play out. It's a clever bit of writing, but it'll probably only work one more time—if that—now that it's been done. Not that Tales from the Borderlands needs clever narrative devices at every turn to work. Its strength is fun characters.

I really like Rhys and Fiona. They're both a bit chaotic and prone to saying and doing whatever'll get an uncomfortable laugh from their friends—at least, that's how I played them—but they're generally good-natured. It's fun to get them into and out of bad situations (mostly involving insane bandits), and fun to let them be heartless (so-and-so will remember that) when it feels necessary. Like, they're good people and all, just maybe murderers sometimes, but you know, Pandora's a harsh place.

I don't love Rhys' friend Vaughn. He's the butt of some good jokes, but he's so weak-willed and easy to cajole I started feeling bad for bringing him along at all. He's a bit of a wet blanket, but of course, his shell is really just there so he can break out of it later, and I could see that from the beginning. I'm sure he'll have his fans. Fiona's sister Sasha, however, I like: she's more mysterious at this point, and I'm not sure what she's thinking yet or exactly how her relationship with Rhys is going to develop.

The voice acting is great, especially Patrick Warburton as the dickish Vasquez—though it's pretty impossible not to hear The Venture Bros.' Brock Samson. Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, and Nolan North are all predictably good, because between the three of them they've done 13 billion games. It'd be shocking if they weren't excellent.

The flavor text is all great, too, and there are some quality comedic moments. I promised no major spoilers, and ruining jokes is a vile thing to do anyway, so I won't describe any of them—except in the screen above, I suppose, but it's just a tiny sample of the tone to expect. It's the Borderlands tone of absurdity, for sure, but with more value put on delivery.

Telltale has started very strong. I'm looking forward to the next episode, and my only fear is that it won't be able to match the scale of this one, which feels like an all-out effort to reel in full-season purchases. But even if it's a little shorter, or a little less punchy, I'll take any episode that lets me see these characters develop more, and have some power to manipulate their relationships and make them say dumb stuff.

Tales from the Borderlands isn't the best thing ever, like I so often feel right after I've finished playing one of these Telltale deals, but it is some of Telltale's finest work. I already expect to like it more than The Wolf Among Us, which I liked quite a bit. There are four more episodes to go, and I think there'll be a lot of fun had discussing our favorite moments and decisions over the course of the series.

Over the last month, Blizzard has laid down the law by banning thousands of Hearthstone accounts for botting. Perhaps in a weird act of revenge we may never truly understand, the bots have returned to Hearthstone—and this time they're rigging the Twitter voting that's being used to reveal new cards from the game s Goblins vs Gnomes expansion. 

The official website has been drip feeding new cards to fans since the set was announced at Blizzcon. It teases two cards, with name, cost, and text hidden, and enables people to vote on Twitter for which they think should be revealed a few days later. Today marked the end of the sixth vote, and with it came compelling evidence of foul play.

The last contest had over 40,000 votes cast, and saw the blue side receive a surge of votes towards the end to win by less than 200, but within minutes of the next vote going live, the same side had nearly 1,200 votes while the other sat at a few dozen. Users on the Hearthstone subreddit started crying foul, and the discovery of a twitter user who voted for the blue side hundreds of times in a matter of minutes provided a convincing argument against the legitimacy of the contest.

Credit to reddit user /u/Nulligon for the well timed screenshot.

With only two votes left to run, it s unlikely Blizzard will adjust the voting system. Senior game designer Ben Brode light-heartedly acknowledged the situation and has already stated that all the cards will be revealed before Goblins vs Gnomes launches next month anyway. So, no harm done really, although it sucks some of the joy out of an otherwise fun idea (but does oddly play into the misbehaving mechs theme). Meanwhile, we've been reviewing each of the recent cards as they've been announced, which you can take a look at here.

Reports of the demise of Irrational Games were apparently an exaggeration, as the studio has posted job listings for two positions, one of them being a senior programmer familiar with Unreal Engine 3 and 4. Job listings aren't the sort of thing we normally pay much attention to, but earlier this year founder Ken Levine announced that he was "winding down" the studio in order to start something new and "more entrepreneurial" under the Take-Two banner.

The studio is currently seeking an IT Manager, who will "hold end-to-end responsibility for all servers, workstations, network infrastructure and applications," but it's the senior programmer position that I think is more relevant to our interests. The position requires experience "architecting and implementing AI and gameplay systems," and will "will work directly with the Lead Programmer, along with the Animation, Art and Design teams to create fun and interesting AI opponents and gameplay elements for our next title." The listing also notes that among many other desirable skills, "multiplayer experience is a plus."

There is of course no indication as to what Irrational's next project will be, but the fact that there will be one at all is interesting in and of itself because of Levine's apparent farewell to the studio in February. "I am winding down Irrational Games as you know it," he said at the time. "I ll be starting a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavor at Take-Two." He said he'd initially intended to launch his new venture with a "classical startup model," but Take-Two convinced him to pursue the project under its auspices.

Presumably the "as you know it" is the key quote from Levine. He didn't explicitly state that Irrational was done, although it certainly sounded like it, and many sites reported it as such. The first and foremost question at this point, then, is whether these job listings mean Levine's new operation is bulking up, or that Take-Two is bringing the famed studio back to meaningful life. We've reached out for more information, and will update if and when we receive a reply.

Minecraft mod maker iChun has released Tabula, a mod that enables the creation of models within the game.

IChun doesn't say much about the "in-game Minecraft modeler," although he did put up a brief video on YouTube showing the mod in action. Its UI is perhaps not the most intuitive ever, but iChun said it's based off the Techne mod by ZeuX and r4wk, and functions in a very similar fashion. It's meant as a replacement for Techne (and can open Techne files), but not as a "proper replacement for third-party modelers such as Blender or Maya."

Tabula requires the Minecraft Forge and iChunUtil software to operate. It imports models directly from Minecraft, and exports Java code for modders. Survival Multiplayer (SMP) compatibility is in the works, and future compatibility with 1.8 blocks is also a possibility. And if that sounds like a good time to you, you can learn more (or just grab the thing and play around with it) at ichun.us.

We like cheap PC components and accessories. But you know what we like even more? Expensive PC components and accessories that are on sale. We ve partnered with the bargainmeisters at TechBargains to bring you a weekly list of the best component, accessory, and software sales for PC gamers.

Some highlights this week: Both Dragon Age: Inquisition and Far Cry 4 are 25% off with the code found below. The classic Jet Set Radio is only $1.24 in today's deal on GreenManGaming.com. The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti is over $300 off and comes with your choice of Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, or The Crew. The MSI Radeon R9 290X sheds $100 off its usual price and comes with four free games: Civilization: Beyond Earth plus your choice of three more from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more.

Games:

— Dragon Age: Inquisition is $45 on GreenManGaming with the code 1MZ9FW-H92JSD-2CT74F

— Far Cry 4 is $45 on GreenManGaming with the code 1MZ9FW-H92JSD-2CT74F

— Today only, Wing Commander Saga (8 games in a bundle) is only $9.52 on GOG.com.

— Gamersgate is having a pre-Thanksgiving sale, featuring Borderlands titles for 75% off , GTA titles for 80% off and more.

— Today only, Jet Set Radio is a mere $1.24 on GreenManGaming, along with a bunch of other cheap games.

Hardware:

— The Lenovo Z40 14in Gaming Laptop is $619 on Lenovo s site with the code D2BZ40

— The Seagate Expansion 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive is $79.99 on Newegg.

— The PNY Optima SSD7SC240GOPT-RB 240GB 2.5" InternalSATA III SSD is only $69.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 ATX Cube Case is $99.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF72 (expires 11/26) and after a $10 rebate.

— The D-Link DAP-1650 Wireless AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Range Extender is $79.99 on Newegg after a $10 rebate.

— The TP-Link TL-WDR3600 Dual Band Gigabit Router is all the way down to $39.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF49. (expires 11/26)

— The TP-Link TL-WR841ND Wireless N Router is only $14.99 on Newegg with the code EMCWWHF76 (expires 11/26) and after a $5 rebate.

— The EVGA SuperNOVA 850W ATX12V 80PLUS BRONZE Modular Power Supply is $69.99 On Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The Raidmax RX-635AP 635W ATX12V 80PLUS BRONZE Modular Power Supply is $29.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— Get four 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series DDR4 RAM (16GB total) for $229.99 on Newegg.

— Get two 4GB Team Vulcan DDR3 RAM (8GB total) for $56.99 on Newegg.

— The MSI Gaming N760 GeForce GTX 760 video card is $179.99 on Newegg after a $20 rebate.

— The MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming video card is $299.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate, but is also packed full of free games. It comes with a free copy of Civilization: Beyond Earth, plus your choice of three more games from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more.

— The Sapphire Dual-X 100373-2L Radeon R9 280 video card is $169.99 on Newegg after a $15 rebate, and also comes with your choice of three games from a list that includes Alien: Isolation, Star Citizen, Sniper Elite 3, Thief, Tomb Raider, and many more, just like above.

— The EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti video card is $489.99 on Newegg after a $30 rebate, and comes with your choice of one of the following three games: Assassin s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, The Crew.

For more tech deals, visit techbargains.com.

A note on affiliates: some of our stories, like this one, include affiliate links to online stores. These online stores share a small amount of revenue with us if you buy something through one of these links, which help support our work evaluating components and games.

For the most part, Defenders of Time is a conventional tower defense game. Waves of aliens emerge on one end of the map, and I have to prevent them from reaching my generator on the other end. Maps are square-based grids, with various immovable objects that change up their layouts. Much like in the excellent Defense Grid 2, the trick is in using the towers to create a maze that will make the aliens' trip as long as possible, and picking the right combination of tower types to match their strengths and weaknesses.

The twist is an eight-player multiplayer mode where three members of each team build towers simultaneously on separate but identical maps, while one member of each team acts as a commander, tweaking the attacking alien waves and upgrading a tech tree that unlocks new tower types for teammates. It s interesting, but the core game just can t make it fun.

Sometimes, I reach wave 20 and the screen is just a huge mess of aliens and purple explosions that destroy my framerate. I kind of I understand some of what's happening, though the learning experience is always counter-intuitive. There's always too much going on, or not enough. Levels seem really difficult at first, and simplistic once I memorize where to put down my towers. Matches start as a crazy race to get my bearings, then slow down to war of attrition. It was hard to find any moments to enjoy in between, and when I did, there were still technical issues to deal with.

I appreciate that Defenders of Time tries something new, but it misses the mark at every turn.

Weak foundations

One of the few interesting things that Defenders of Time does is use a single base tower type that can be upgraded to all other types: an area of effect cannon, a tower that slows down aliens, and others, all of which I've seen in previous games. This allowed me to think about pathing first, then quickly upgrade the base tower to one of six different types, which, when I had enough money, could be upgraded twice more.

I could easily see how my different tower maze structures affected the aliens' paths and use that information to improve, but never felt that my choice of towers made as big of a difference. Alien and tower encyclopedias were added a week after launch—but only via links to the developer's website—and the tutorial mode, which already does a poor job of explaining the game's basic premise with on-screen text (without pausing the game or highlighting important elements) doesn't even bother to go into that subject. The only way to know that the purple, tesla coil-looking, Dynamo Flash tower does extra damage to flying units (which, by the way, are never fun in tower defense games), is to hover your mouse over it and read the description during a match that you can't even pause in singleplayer.

The visual design, which is a gaudy mix of 'chrome-punk,' generic aliens, and random locals (Pompeii, Area 51) floating in space, fails to communicate information also. The white, Aegis Sentinel tower makes other towers near it stronger, but it doesn't look like it. It just looks like another offensive tower. This doesn't make the game visually boring, but harder to play because it's not easy to process what towers you have at a glance like you can in other tower defense games. Defenders of Time resorts to a color-coding system to tell towers apart, but it's a weak solution.

A variety of all tower types across the level got me pretty far, but never all the way. I could tell that some aliens were faster, others shielded, but at some point, the AI or commander player boosts the enemies' speed. The aliens, whose awkward walking animations are already slower than their actual speed, start sliding across the map as if someone pushed the fast forward button. It was so odd and unexpected, the first couple of times it happened I assumed I accidentally pressed a button to increase the game speed.

Some of these issues are mitigated in multiplayer by the satisfaction of human cooperation and matches that can turn around in the last minute, but it also introduces totally different issues.

Matchmaking didn't work at all (maybe because nobody was playing), so the only way to get into a game was to invite another player directly after seeing their name in a global chat channel. When I did finally get into a match, in addition to text and voice, drawing tools let me highlight where exactly I wanted another player to place a row of towers. It's a useful way to communicate in a game that requires coordinating with tile-to-tile accuracy, but as with the single-player mode, in the late game, the amount of aliens pouring out is overwhelming, and so visually hectic, it's hard to do anything with much accuracy or forethought.

In the rare cases that I did make it far, there were so many explosions and aliens on screen, that my framerate dropped into the single digits on my AMD Quad Core 3.3GHz, 16GB Ram, GeForce GTX 660 Ti PC.

Tower of babel

Juggling multiple tasks is always a key element in tower defense games. On the one hand, doing it with three other people, who must also ask the commander player for upgrades, can be satisfying, especially since I'm modifying my existing towers to match player-customized waves of enemies. On the other hand, this concept isn t well balanced either. The players placing towers have too much to do, while as a commander I spent a lot of time waiting to deploy new waves and for resources to trickle in.

Additionally, most of the strategy is still in creating the longest maze, which is strictly about pathing, and since levels aren't randomly generated, it'd be easy to find the optimal maze for each and repeat it in every game—and Defenders of Time only has six levels.

There are a couple of interesting ideas in Defenders of Time, but upon further inspection they re poorly executed, and partly flawed at their core. Graphically, it looks like it could have been released years ago, but it still suffers from performance issues. In addition to the low framerate, it crashed several times and kept popping out to windowed mode arbitrarily. According to the archaic global chat channel, this wasn't limited to my machine.

It does a poor job explaining how its multiplayer mode works, let alone its long-term appeal, which, frankly, isn't there. It doesn't feel finished or polished regardless of context, but given all the other great tower defense games such as Defense Grid 2, Orcs Must Die!, and Sanctum, it's simply a waste of time unless you can get eight friends together. And if you really want multiplayer tower defense, Defense Grid 2 does that far better as well.

Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues has arrived on Steam Early Access. This release comes at a bit of a discount off the planned regular price, but it's also in a pre-alpha state, which the developers say means that it still needs "a LOT of work"—caps theirs—and won't feel like a finished game.

Shroud of the Avatar's Steam launch coincides with Release 12, which features the addition of a number of new features. Among them are 15 new skills and more than 50 weapon and armor crafting recipes, an in-game hint system, 40 new songs, the addition of Skill Trainers, maps for the Ravenswood Forest and Tower of the Shuttered Eye areas, guild support, and "polished visuals and random encounters" on the overworld map.

"When we applied for Early Access for the game, we received our green light in less than three days. In fact Steam players gave the OK with an 86 percent approval rating," Garriott said in a statement. "What they ll find is a fantasy RPG that harkens back to my earlier games in the genre, but with modern day technology that combines a single player narrative with an Ultima-like sandbox MMO."

That's presumably referring to the state of the game at some point in the future, perhaps in mid-2015, when beta testing is expected to begin. For now, the Early Access release would seem to be more about getting some insight, and maybe the opportunity to have input, into its development. "This game still needs a LOT of work, and will be under construction for some time," the Early Access page warns. 

"This means it won't feel like a finished game to you because some of the features are half-finished or missing entirely, the design hasn't been balanced, performance hasn't been optimized, lots of bugs to fix, etc. Joining now means participating in the development, not just playing the game."

If you're cool with all that—and lots of people are: Shroud of the Avatar pulled in more than $1.9 million on Kickstarter and nearly $3.3 million more through its own crowdfunding campaign—you can get in on the action on Steam. To learn more about what Lord British and co. are getting up to, have a look at our hands-on preview from June.

Work on a fan-made redo of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines called Project Vaulderie has come to an abrupt halt after its developers received a cease-and-desist letter from CCP Games. The team had actually been preparing a pitch for the project for Activision prior to receiving the letter, which clarified that while Activision "retains certain rights to the game it created," CCP owns all other rights associated with Vampire: The Masquerade.

"We re very sad to report that we received a Cease & Desist e-mail from CCP Games, asking us to cease game development, remove any materials that might contain Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines, names, locations or related elements from the sites we control, and cease any further use of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines property," the leader of the Vaulderie team wrote in a farewell message. "All of this invalidates our effort and the meaning of the entire project: As a remake of Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines cannot be a remake without its original contents."

The message notes that Bloodlines, which was originally released in 2004, continues to be supported and updated by fan-made patches. "We made it quite clear that this is a fan re-imagining of the game. We simply want to do this to keep the game, the story, and the world it lives in, alive and re-imagined for a new generation," the message states. "Both the game and the idea behind the project was made sorely with out of passion."

Nonetheless, even though CCP pulled the plug on its planned World of Darkness MMO earlier this year, it's clearly determined to protect its interests in the IP: The cease-and-desist letter threatens further legal action, "including but not limited to a DMCA notice to your Internet Service Provider," if the developers fail to comply with its demands.

For those of you who missed out on the gothic wonders of Bloodlines ten years ago, it can still be had on Steam.

Creative Assembly has announced the release date for Total War: Attila. The Rome 2 follow up is set after 365 AD, which (history spoiler) wasn't a particularly peaceful or prosperous period for the ill-fated empire. Maybe you can reverses their fortune? You'll be able to find out on 17 February.

There is, of course, a pre-order bonus in place. This time it's the Viking Forefathers Culture Pack, which adds three Norse factions: The Danes, The Jutes and The Geats. That pack will also be available separately, for those not desperate to rush to more War.

For more on Attila, head here: my hands-on impressions of what it's all about.

By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell.

Remember when PC Gamer scored the Pyramids of Giza a solid 81%, praising the authentically weathered textures while docking points for repetitive encounter design? No, neither do I, and that's why I'm a little in awe of Never Alone. On one level the game is disarmingly straightforward: it's a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer with ICO-style partner mechanics for one or two players, where you guide a cherubic waif and her fox companion through a wilderness of bobbing, buckling ice floes, lowering forests and ramshackle stilt villages. On another, it's something quite special and, from a reviewer's perspective, intimidating.

Working with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Upper One Games has assembled a marvellous tribute to the I upiaq tribespeople who reside in northern Alaska, in which videos about native customs are unlocked as you progress through the campaign's eight chapters. Unlocking is too bleak and unfeeling a word, though what you're doing is reclaiming, rescuing the fragments of a way of life that's melting away into the ocean, in order to shore up the sense of fellowship that's boldly insisted upon by the game s title. The result is beautiful, hopeful and sad. Scoring it feels rather presumptuous, like slapping Must Buy! on the cover of the diary of Anne Frank.

To put the cherry on the cake, Never Alone is also a cautionary tale about climate change. Its plot draws on the Inupiaq folk legend of Kunuuksaayuka, in which a boy searches for the source of an endless blizzard. Some of the videos deal with the overlap between this and latter-day global warming directly, but the sharper display of political awareness is perhaps the problematising of hoary old genre devices, such as moving platforms—you can t leap aboard a free-floating ice block, or flood a chamber in order to reach the one above, without thinking about the warming sea all around you. There s an argument about materialism in play, too: Nuna is pursued through certain levels by a fireball-throwing, village-wrecking Manslayer, a folkloric representation of avarice, whose rapacity must ultimately be turned against him.

The symbiotic rapport between the girl and the fox—which trots jauntily out of the artfully blurred, spectral backdrop just in time to save her from a hungry polar bear—is a crux for the narrative s preoccupation with reconciliation between humankind and environment. It s also the basis for some pleasing if gentle puzzles, where you switch between characters with Q key to use their complementary abilities in tandem (the offhand character follows your lead automatically, assuming there isn t a co-op partner to hand).

The fox is springy enough to scamper up surfaces and wall-jump, its claws skittering over the rock, while the girl is able to climb ropes and drag crates to serve as platforms or weigh down see-saw structures. The fox s presence also attracts friendly spirits who resemble traditional I upiaq drawings, each sliding into focus as you approach like plankton under a microscope. These can be clambered on by Nuna, providing her furry accomplice is nearby—as you d expect, more challenging puzzles ask you to maintain that proximity despite the level layout s efforts to keep you apart.

Some spirits are initially trapped inside gristly orbs of light that must be popped with the girl s throwable bola, which can also be hurled at brittle ice formations and wood to clear the path. Later on, the fox gains the ability to call the creatures with a button press, a trick that allows it to move platforms manually. This crescendos in the spectacle of a dryad striding through the waves while Nuna clings to its branches, which untwist and stretch out towards ledges at the fox s urging.

Never Alone s healing of the rift between a world and its inhabitants via the functional relationship between two characters is perhaps its strongest quality. Sadly, this interplay also makes it harder to ignore the blemishes, such as the AI s occasional decision to walk into hazards, or the times when you leap for a handhold and somehow don t connect. The sorest spot of all is that spirits can only move in scripted ways, but exactly how isn t obvious—leading to moments of frustration during chase sequences, as you struggle to decipher the game s platforming logic.

Another quibble is that the story can be completed in an evening or two, which means that the puzzles don t have time to flower into conundrums as rich as those of, say, Dustforce. Still, to complain about length is to miss the point of a game that doesn t just set out to entertain. Never Alone is a wonderful living record, articulated and at times hindered by the mechanisms of the platforming genre. It teaches that the preservation of history is its own reward, and proves that videogames have as much right to facilitate that process as any other artform.