ETAO Podcast, Episode 63.

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/etao.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/etao-podcast-63-analgesic-1.mp3

Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka worked together on the original Anodyne, its under-appreciated follow-up Even the Ocean, and now their latest Analgesic Productions joint, Anodyne 2: Return to Dust. It’s a game about getting to know the world in its infinite strangeness, acquiring and shedding preconceptions, and meeting new people who radically alter your sense of what’s right, what’s wrong, and who you are. It’s also a game about every possible meaning of the words fidelity and scale.

Of course, it’s not only about any one of those things. It’s looser and more expansive than that, which is exactly why, like the previous Anodyne before, it offers such a nourishing meal for players’ imaginations. In this interview, Melos and Marina shrink to ETAO scale to talk about how they build worlds in not much time, the eternal duality of canon and meta, and plenty else.

You can get Anodyne 2: Return to Dust on Steam, Itch, GOG, Humble, and Kartridge.
You can also follow Melos and Marina on Twitter, and join the Analgesic Productions Discord.
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• Melos was going by Sean at the time of this interview.

• The archive of my Destiny 2 tidying stream lives on YouTube, and of course, here on the site.

• I poked at capital-s Surrealism a bunch, thinking of André Breton’s ideas of automatic writing and Salvador Dalí’s approach to surrealist subject matter, both of which I’d say are relevant to Melos and Marina’s approach.

• In case you’re never read about Shovel Knight’s selective faithfulness to the NES and SNES. Anodyne 2 really does take almost exactly the opposite approach, in some ways.

• Here’s Marina on the Nice Games Club podcast.

• And here’s GLITCH, the co-working space in Minneapolis that Marina mentioned.

• Just as importantly, here’s a look at 七ツ風の島物語.

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“All The People Say (Season 3)” by Holly Hyperion.
“~*~Sparkle~*~Sparkle~*~Neuromaze~*~,” “Yummy Sippy Cozy,” “Tree Master Fan Cave,” and “City Center Cenote,” from the Anodyne 2: Return to Dust Original Soundtrack by Melos Han-Tani.

We’re on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Overcast, Breaker, and RadioPublic. You can also subscribe using good old-fashioned RSS.

Logo by Aaron Perry-Zucker, using Icons by by Llisole, Dávid Gladiš, Atif Arshad, Daniel Nochta, Mike Rowe, Jakub Čaja, Raji Purcell and IconsGhost from the Noun Project.

Left-click to play. Right-click to download.