Never Alone

In this adventurous platformer, players follow the young Iñupiaq girl, Nuna’s journey to save her village with the help of a fox companion and Helping Spirits. This game is entirely narrated in the Iñupiaq language and depicts the legends, art, and culture of the Iñupiaq people.

While we originally meet Nuna in her village, the majority of the game is spent traveling through the tundra and emphasizes the exceptional nature of this journey. Throughout the game, players encounter figures from Iñupiaq legend and other elements of Nuna’s culture and worldview. While there are some elements of violence such as breaking the ice and dodging a polar bear attack, the majority of the game is not focused on violence as Nuna and the fox use skills taught by the Helping Spirits and ingenuity to outpace the various bosses present in the platformer.

Additionally, Upper One Games has inserted paratextual videos that provide context for the different cultural references. These videos feature Iñupiaq cultural ambassadors who not only give context for the game’s cultural references, but they share memories and discuss how their cultural ties impact them today. However, it is important to note that while these videos do appear in the game, they first must be unlocked by the player, and then the player is given the option to skip these videos.

Never Alone, while focusing on the past and legend during gameplay, offers space for contemporary views through the voices of the Iñupiaq cultural ambassadors. Upper One Games has discussed the importance of their collaboration with the Iñupiaq people. According to Upper One Games, 40 Iñupiaq storytellers, elders, and community members were involved during Never Alone’s development. Additionally, Upper One Games was the first Indigenous-owned commercial game company in the United States, though it did merge with E-Line Media in 2014. E-Line Media and Upper One Games worked together to develop Never Alone. Not only did the companies collaborate with indigenous peoples in the design of the game, but by including the Iñupiaq language as the only narration for the game and including videos of the cultural ambassadors, Never Alone is able to showcase both the historical and contemporary realities of the Iñupiaq people.

Never Alone is a platforming game with a single or cooperative mode. Players will control both Nuna and the fox during solo mode by switching between them. This platformer mostly requires problem-solving over technical prowess and can be completed by most players. According to HowLongtoBeat.com, Never Alone takes 3 hours to complete.

Schlag, J. (2018). Surviving the Colonial Blizzard: The Alaskan Native Game Never Alone as a Walkthrough in Cultural Resistance. In: McDaniel, K.N. (eds) Virtual Dark Tourism. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74687-6_12

In this article, Schlag argues that by viewing Never Alone as a journey involving unresolved trauma, players are able to understand current negotiations of trauma on both the individual and cross-cultural levels.

Perreault, M. F., Perreault, G., & Suarez, A. (2022). What Does it Mean to be a Female Character in “Indie” Game Storytelling? Narrative Framing and Humanization in Independently Developed Video Games. Games and Culture, 17(2), 244–261. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211026279

In this article, the authors analyze the representation of women in three indie games in order to argue that these three games are able to present “an alternative, humanizing narrative on women.”

Hammer, Jessica, and Drew Davidson. “Cultural Alignment and Game-Based Learning.” Educational Technology, vol. 57, no. 2, 2017, pp. 31–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44430521. Accessed 27 Sep. 2022.

Hammer and Davidson define games as (re)producers of meaning and argue that games need reflexive processes that center cultural alignment.