AnShi Review (Nintendo Switch)

Review code used, with many thanks to Heideland GameWorks

Introduction

A story of what could happen if aliens came down to a ruined Earth… kind of. AnShi puts us onto the hoverboard of an alien creature who has crash-landed on an Earth-Esque planet; this little alien must now traverse the landscape in search of memories to find out what has happened to create such a barren, uninhabited, landscape.

Looking at screenshots of the game, it definitely gives off vibes of That Game Company’s 2012 hit game: Journey. The shining golden sand, the killer soundtrack, and the sense of a vast emptiness to uncover.

Anshi LadiesGamers — Vast, empty landscape to explore? Yes, please!

However, that is, most, unfortunately, where the similarities cease. AnShi seems to have had very lofty goals, but unfortunately, the bar set by Journey was one too high to reach.

Controls

Players can interact with certain things in the environment by pressing A and can get on and off their trusty hoverboard with X. Our little alien avatar can walk and run, but walking is agonizingly, painfully, slow. Running, by holding down ZR, can make you move slightly faster. However, the speed boost feels almost negligible, and just as frustratingly slow as walking.

Thankfully, you can press X to get on your trusty hoverboard, and this allows you to move at a reasonable speed. But even this is constantly interrupted, as every time you interact with an object (collecting a memory, or activating the life-force trees, etc.), the little cut-scene forces you back on your feet. This felt completely unnecessary. Having to press X again, and then watch the animation of grabbing for your board, putting it down, and getting on it before you can move on was disheartening.

The cutscenes are not skippable either, and this can be an issue when the cutscenes are so similar; when you collect a memory – and there are three in each level – it is the same cutscene just with a different hieroglyphic picture.

There are a few sections that actually force your character to walk through space, and this gets unbearable very quickly. I found myself mashing the X button until the game allowed my little alien back on the board.

Visuals

Overall, the game’s graphics look like they were created a few console generations ago. AnShi looks like it was made during the era of the PS2, maybe even the PS1.

I felt it was a very strange choice to create this game with these graphics. The Switch, while not as powerful as it’s next-generation console-siblings is definitely capable of so much more than AnShi is bringing to the table. Unfortunately, the result is a game that looks like it’s still in the beta-testing phase, rather than ready-to-play.

The movement of your alien character is sadly lacking as well; it feels very rigid, and frequently visits the realm of the uncanny valley. During a cutscene, a tower crumbled from underneath my character’s feet, and the animation of my character sliding down and falling off looked almost like a Lego man had been put into a sitting position then filmed sliding down.

The animation of the Companion is interesting and has an eye-pleasing quality to it, but when you’re riding your hoverboard Companion can’t keep up, so players aren’t going to be looking at the strange orb very often.

Companion

Companion: an orb of light that you meet at the start of AnShi who then joins you for the rest of your journey. It feels like the developers had high hopes for Companion, but unfortunately, I did not feel compelled to care about it.

There’s a brief cut-scene at the beginning that shows your character ducking into a shallow alcove, and then all of a sudden we find orb are best friends. There was no real sense of earning a true friendship with this creature; it felt contrived.

Companion’s participation in the gameplay felt unnecessary. It provides you with light at one point in a darker area, but the difference felt negligible, as well I felt a simple light on your shirt would have done the same job. Companion catches you when you jump off a cliff in a cut-scene, but I felt that the hoverboard could have easily done that job.

There are a couple of very brief sections where you play AS companion, fitting into small spaces to activate checkpoints. These little sections were a neat idea, unfortunately, underutilized and therefore seemed superfluous.

Sound

This is the true saving grace of this game. The music is beautifully done and creates the perfect atmospheric feel. It does this even when, visually, you might not be sure what the atmosphere is actually supposed to be. The music is all orchestral: soft piano sounds and the like, and honestly is worthy of a listen by anyone who likes that kind of music.

Execution

AnShi is a game that could, honestly, benefit from more development time. I understand that developing a game takes a lot of time and hard work, and even in the ending credits the developer mentions that it had been several years of such.

But I feel that, by not taking the proper time to polish everything graphically and control-wise, the developer did a bit of a disservice to the game.

AnShi has all of the conceptual pieces required for one of those “crushing sense of loneliness” and “what mysterious event happened in the past to make the world like this?” kind of games. However the game – sadly – falls short of achieving the kind of ambience it was trying to create.

To top it all off, the game still has glitch issues. I encountered a few while playing; from harmless graphical issues like your character standing on the rock-floor during a cutscene, all the way to my accidentally falling off an edge and then literally clipping through the floor and seeing all of the game’s textures above me.

Conclusion

AnShi felt like a disjointed, and frequently confusing, a story that was being told TO me, rather than WITH me. Even the idea of exploring the vast expanse is derailed by way too many invisible walls forcing you onto a straight path.

There are some glimpses of the atmospheric game it was aspiring to be, and there were some nice feeling moments when I was riding my hoverboard over smooth desert terrain into a sunset. The music is divine, but unfortunately, it is simply not enough to save the rest of the game. The nugget of something good is there, but I feel that it needs a lot more work to become what it is striving to be.

Final Verdict: I Don’t Like It