Eastward

Eastward is a top-down action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world where human civilization has retreated underground, squeezed into isolated pocket communities while the surface remains toxic and dangerous. You play as John, a taciturn laborer with a frying pan and a shotgun, who discovers Sam, a girl with unusual powers, hidden in the depths of his settlement. What follows is a cross-country journey through a world that is simultaneously dying and stubbornly alive, rendered in some of the most jaw-dropping pixel art you will see on a modern PC. Pixpil's visual craft is genuinely exceptional - each new town feels like a diorama someone spent months painting by hand. The comparison everyone reaches for is early Hayao Miyazaki, and it is mostly earned. The relationship between John and Sam drives everything, and the writing around their bond is warm without being saccharine. Sam is curious and chatty where John is nearly mute, and the push-pull of their dynamic carries the quieter stretches of the story. Combat uses a dual-character system where you switch between John's melee and ranged weapons and Sam's increasingly powerful CHROMA abilities, which function like a puzzle tool as much as a damage source. The boss encounters are the high points, genuinely creative and demanding enough to keep you paying attention without becoming a wall of frustration. Where the game loses momentum is the middle act, which stretches considerably. Several towns introduce side content and mini-games - including a surprisingly full in-world RPG called Earth Born that you can actually play on terminals scattered around the world - that are charming individually but collectively slow the main throughline to a crawl. If you are the kind of player who tracks narrative momentum carefully, you will feel the drag. The story's final act compensates with some real ambition, but it asks you to stay patient through sequences that a tighter edit would have cut by half. John's build variety is also limited; you swap weapons and find upgrades, but there is no meaningful skill tree or character customization beyond equipment loadout, which means the RPG label on the tin is doing a lot of lifting. For players who put story, atmosphere, and visual craft above mechanical depth, Eastward delivers something genuinely rare: a game that feels handmade in every pixel and earns most of its emotional moments honestly. The worldbuilding has real texture - the lore around CHROMA, the politics of the isolated settlements, the hints at what ended surface civilization - and rewards players who read item descriptions and talk to every NPC. It is not a game that will challenge your build planning or reward min-maxing, but it will stick with you the way a well-illustrated graphic novel does. Monika, Scout Team