Never Alone

100% positive review for the cultural insights and story sequences. Thank you to the Alaskan Iñupiaq community for the opportunity to listen to your experiences! The format is informal, personal and entertaining, with lots of individual stories and perspectives.
The animated story sequences throughout the game are done in a nice style that evokes the legends well. The overall idea of working with others to survive and not being self centred tie the insights, story and game together.
As for the game itself, mixed review. The visuals are quite attractive, if bleak at times. I really liked the design of the helper spirits, otherworldly yet comforting. The characters of Nuna and the Fox are both very cute, making it kind of sad when they fall off a ledge, unfortunately (Especially since the surviving character will begin crying for a few seconds before the sequence restarts.). The puzzle platformer element is sometimes fun, other times a bit tedious and sometimes just frustrating. I did encounter a bug where a boss fight that should have been easy became impossible. When I redid the sequence, including the chase that led up to the fight, which I really didn't want to re-do, the fight was over in a few tries. To be fair I don't really like platformers anymore except metroidvanias, but this one did seem quite clunky. The controls don't matter so much in the first half of the game as not much precision is required. In the second half the difficulty is increased but the controls still aren't responsive enough to allow you to make precise moves. As others have mentioned, the AI controlling the second character in 1 player mode will sometimes jump the second character off a ledge, forcing you to redo a sequence. So it's hard to recommend the game itself without caveat. I mainly bought this for the cultural elements, which are totally worth it. Just don't expect the fun platforming experience of the year.

"We were not into an '8 to 5' kind of time. We're in a totally different kind of time; we're in 'ecological time.'" Ronald Aniqsuaq
This is a gentle gameplay experience, with optional documentary explaining daily human life in the arctic, which is interwoven from the many local species.
The bottom of the visible food chain in a frozen environment is going to be fish - not grass or other plants. Hence human life is almost exclusively maintained by hunting. I don't expect any discussion of vegetarianism in this game, as plants practically don't exist (at least I haven't seen any within the first hour of the game). Rather, this is a discussion of life begetting life, and at an intuitive level the mind guiding each individual to survive. There is folklore and animism explaining how the frozen world works and remains whole.
In the gameplay, you are the little girl who is accompanied by an arctic fox to find her village after getting lost in a blizzard. You can play with the keyboard or with a gamepad controller. Switch between the fox and the girl to access special moves. It is a long series of platforming puzzles to go through - there's some exploring, and the solutions to the puzzles are sometimes off-screen in the surrounding area.
The Game In A Nutshell:
The artwork is very immersive, presenting animated drawings of the girl's story, and the filmaking is 5-star documentary quality. The game is essentially something like a History Channel documentary explaining the daily life of arctic indigenous people broken up over time by a fairly easy puzzle platformer game.
I like to play this in small doses, and learn about this remote people who live in a very hard place, smiles beaming, happy to be here.

I am in my fifties. The game brings out my child like wonder. I love the stories. They bring me to a special place which exists only in the imagination. Looking forward to hearing all of them :-)

This game is amazing. The story is compelling, the gameplay is smooth and fun, the characters are extremely lovable, and the video clips of culture and myth are super informative and interesting. I absolutely ADORED this game. Please buy this game and play it, it's incredible. I love everything about it.

Never Alone is a puzzle platformer game with an Alaskan setting focusing on the Alaskan natives and their way of life. After playing it, I don’t know if I can consider this as a game or even an interactive story. In fact, it feels more like an interactive documentary and I will explain why.
I came into the game expecting similar gameplay to Limbo but instead there are hardly any puzzles. The puzzles are extremely straightforward with the answer staring right at you. As a platformer, it isn’t a very good one too unfortunately. I didn’t like how the characters controlled personally, especially the fox as it felt too floaty for my liking. The platforming segments are really straightforward until the final act where its just plain annoying with that endgame sequence. I won’t spoil it but you can expect many deaths and retries unless you are used to MOBA or RTS games and are able to effortlessly switch and coordinate actions between your two playable characters with a time limit. In short, if you are thinking of getting this game for its gameplay: I think you will end up disappointed.
Where this game is unique however is that there is a short documentary featuring multiple short interview clips with real life Alaskan natives and their culture, folk tales and way of life within the game. In the game you will encounter owls. Each time you encounter an owl or progress the plot to a certain extent, an ‘insight’ or a mini documentary/clip is unlocked. I find these very interesting to watch and is the feature that made me ultimately decide to recommend others to play this game.
Having said that, the story is kind of a mess and doesn’t feel cohesive. It feels as though they are trying to make a plot based on the documentary clips. For example, one clip talked about how a woman’s brother raised a bear cup after killing its mother. The next segment features a polar bear. And when there is a clip of northern lights who are children who died early and will pull off your head to play football with it. The next segment features these playful but harmful spirits. Therefore, I feel as though I am playing through a series of scenes rather than an actual story. That’s why I was surprised when the credits rolled and the story was actually adapted from a source material.

Never Alone is what I'd personally call an educadventure. Featuring simple yet fun gameplay it also entails lots of actual knowledge about life on the coldest places of earth as well as the mythology and history of the Iñupiaq while providing great platforming that felt a bit like Limbo. Just without the gruesome parts and eery atmosphere.
While not being a particularly long game, the educational content consists of roughly two hours of documentary in total about a topic I personally knew absolutely nothing about, which was immensely refreshing and interesting.
The game deserves all the prizes it won and more, being both something culturally relevant as well as just a great little indie title.
Definitely recommended

I played this game before, years ago. I love that it has an educational element. As an archaeologist, I'm intrigued by using this medium to preserve knowledge. This game is visually breathtaking...It's not particularly difficult but still entertaining to play. Also...I love foxes.