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 7
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 2
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
I didn't really expect to like this game! I think what worked with me is the presentation of all these game elements rather than the actual gameplay. Maybe it's mostly because I really like the art style and it adds to the exploration. Although the art doesn't help with some of the puzzles since they're hard to recognize. I didn't really like it as a rhythm game, but I do as an exploration/adventure game with norse myth inspirations.
Steam User 0
A pretty positive 6/10 in my book.
Likes
Beautiful art style. I mean some of those scenes are really worth of a print or a poster.
Highly enjoyable soundtrack.
Lots of little things to discover.
I think that the stories are told well, I like the range of voices and tones within them.
The reasons that this game isn't ranked higher for me:
I found the rhythm combat very easy. I'll be the first to admit, I'm really bad at rhythm games. I played on normal mode, so it's entirely possible that I'd enjoy hardcore mode more so, but like I said--I'm usually just out and out terrible at rhythm games (stiff hands, lots of crochet). I never had to use a single health item throughout the game, and just kind of kept getting more hearts so it was never really something to worry about. I tooled around in the arena mode for a little while, and that definitely had some more challenge options to it.
I was not a fan of the moving bar during rhythm combat alongside the active scene in the background. The movement of the bar wasn't really an issue, but I couldn't really enjoy the beautiful art/active scene in background at the same time. I didn't mess with story mode, so maybe that'd give me more time to actually view what's going on, but I'm not moved to replay the entire game in order to see.
In terms or replay-ability, I could definitely understand wanting to. I'm not particularly moved in that way. If the puzzles and combat stay roughly the same, across each play through, then I wouldn't personally feel like investing the play time again.
That being said, definitely above average. I think that if you commonly play rhythm games, I might suggest starting in hardcore mode. It was a fun, short game. If you like beautiful art, creative storytelling, a great soundtrack, and fun puzzles, I'd recommend checking it out.
Steam User 0
Interesting game that's more puzzle and story than rhythm.
The main problem is that - I wonder who this would appeal to. Not me.
Steam User 0
Hard not to endorse something that is half puzzle/half rhythm game, features an oddball tone for a pretty sincere alternate take on Norse mythology, with all of its story delivered in highly stylized fashion (which visually seems inspired by instructional illustrations; but really, there are half a different approaches the game employs for its presentation). I quite enjoyed both the content and the design philosophy - what initially came across as a bit simple quickly charmed me.
Unfortunately, the first casualty of indie games is QA. In particular, the puzzles shifted from perfectly doable to "what do you want from me" right near the end with no happy medium in between. The challenge of the rhythm-based combat is similarly polarized when bumping up the difficulty to hardcore. Not to mention that the unchangeable button layout for controller was practically unusable for hardcore and there really should be an option to quickly restart a fight.
Which shouldn't deter you from playing Atone, however. Just keep the default combat difficulty and make peace with the idea of not getting every optional objective when playing blind, lest you end up feeling hoodwinked by an 11th hour difficulty spike.