ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree
The Gods have abandoned Midgard. Once a prosperous land teeming with mythical beasts and beings, it now rots from the inside, tainted by unknown forces. Odin’s chosen guardians of the realm are gone. In their absence, the sacred Elder Tree they swore to protect is exposed to abuse and manipulation. Now, the only remnants of hope reside in Estra, the daughter of mankind’s last great leader.
With a heavy emphasis on narrative, Estra’s journey through Midgard is filled with Nordic lore, mysterious twists, and consequential decisions. Players will converse with a variety of characters and share in Estra’s discoveries as she learns more about her family’s past and the looming darkness spreading across the realm.
Interactive Story
Estra’s path is fraught with difficult decisions and untrustworthy characters that can lead her astray. Her story is intertwined with the player’s ability to discern fact from fiction and to decide right from wrong. Avoid battle, help companions, save your people, but remember that the consequences are Estra’s to bear.
Puzzles
Along the way, players must solve incrementally challenging puzzles that reveal insightful secrets, fantastical abilities, and hidden passageways. While trial and error is useful, patience is necessary. Not every problem allows for multiple mistakes and failure is most certainly an option. The answers you seek may be lost if you make the wrong decision.
Combat
Violence isn’t always necessary, but, when push comes to shove, ATONE’s combat is a delicate dance of sword and axe. Combat is grounded in the rhythm game genre and the mechanics of titles like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. Music is a crucial component, with each fight receiving its very own song.
Music
ATONE’s music and sound design are composed by Australian artist, Luminist (a.k.a. James Shuar), who blends a synth-heavy score with the digitally corrupted sounds of period-specific instruments.
Game Discussion
Steam User 6
The story really exceeded my expectations by a lot. I really wanted to keep playing to know what would happen. The Norse mythology was excellently woven into the storytelling. I especially loved all of the little secrets you can find (quite a lot of them!). The rhythm combat adds a nice layer to the game, with good music. In fact, it's a soundtrack I'd buy if that was available. You can change the difficulty of combat in the story, but not in the arena, which is just playing the combat scenes (I found normal fairly easy, but hard is definitely hard to get perfect at).
The only downsides are that there is no key rebinding- I couldn't even get it in a round about way through Steam (not only is this a critical accessibility function, but also very useful for everyone else); and no separate saves, so if you want to see how a different choice impacts the story, you must replay the entire game. I think saving wherever whenever should be mandatory in this digital age of gaming. That being said, this game is actually worth replaying from the start.
Steam User 3
Very underappreciated game. It has some rough edges, but overall is very good.
A very interesting look at the North mythology, solid writing, likable characters and engaging story. Even multiple endings!
Love it.
Steam User 3
Atone: Heart of the Elder tree is a wonderful game about a girl who’s been through a lot of loss in her life. I feel like the game portrays grief and loss very well. I am glad it mostly stuck to the actual Norse mythology. Finding the lore notes is fun and the animated lore book that sometimes appears when you interact with characters is very neat. One thing that they could have improved on is the voice acting. Some characters did it really well, others were mediocre at best. The art is stunning and there’s so much to do that you cannot see everything in one playthrough. It makes sense, since there are four different endings to the game. The puzzles are fun and challenging as well. I would like to go back and get all the endings with time.
Steam User 2
It's fine.
Visually it's obviously amazing and the story cutscenes are crazy cinematic. The problem though is that there's simply too much fluff in between the rhythm battles or there are simply too few rhythm battles spread throughout the game. Also, the rhythm fights are way too easy for my taste. I instantly turned it on hard mode and still barely felt challenged. However, the mix between Hyper Light Drifter and arcade rhythm game was really cool.
Steam User 1
This was... Hm. I don't know how to explain what sort of game this is. Rhythm combat, story-rich, puzzle based. Some of the puzzles were ridiculously easy and felt great to accomplish, and some were like getting hit with a sledge hammer.
The art design was a little off-putting... it felt like a Nordic version of Teen Titans where some of the portraits were done in a zany! anime-esque style, but then there would be some incredibly smooth animations / cut scenes, only to have another blocky sort of... weird... picture? I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't BAD just... jarring.
Really liked the mythology/lore tidbits, and I'm glad to have played it. Though since you have to replay the whole thing multiple times to get all the achievements and endings, I probably won't (I just don't have the time for it).
Overall, I actually enjoyed it and hope you do, too.
Steam User 0
Excellent rhythm game with actually great music, which is basically a non-existent rarity in gaming. Shame it doesn't have more success, looking at the lack of reviews. The only rhythm game I've ever played that I would actually recommend to people. There's also actually a nice little story in it. Great stylized art as well.
Steam User 0
Good story. animation style, and music. I was never a Guitar Hero player but enjoyed the battles nonetheless. I played on normal mode and had no problem winning the fights despite my lack of experience with that kind of play. Loved all the puzzles