Eastward

Publisher Chucklefish

Developer Pixpil

Format PC (tested), Switch

Release Out now

Nostalgia is powerful magic, and no group is quite so woozily under its spell as those who make, sell and play videogames. Our passions for Nintendo, Sega and all the rest were first inflamed in childhood; it seems possible – inevitable, even – for a person to spend the remainder of their life attempting to recapture the feelings of those formative holidays, sat cross-legged in flickered thrall to the TV set. A moment to consider the numbers involved here in 2021, though. The videogame pixel-art ‘revival’ et al are, to some teenagers, the seminal sources – not the older works from which their makers drew.