The Guitar Hero Gods Meet The Norse Gods

ATONE: Heart of the Elder Tree is a story-driven puzzle game inspired by Norse Mythology and set in a 2D world comprised entirely of hand-drawn angular art. Players inherit the journey of a young warrior named Estra, solving puzzles and surviving rhythm game battle sequences as she ventures to unveil the truth behind her father’s death.

Estra’s path is littered with difficult decisions and untrustworthy characters that can lead her astray especially after watching her father go through a awesome sequence of fighting to only get killed with the rest of the town and 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.

Throughout the narrative, you’ll encounter spirits and enemies that Estra will need to defeat in order to progress. But instead of classic action combat, you will play a rhythm game of sorts, where the goal here is to keep a consistent combo. To me personally the game gives me heavy guitar hero and rock band vibes immediate and literally made me physically scream in pure excitement when i saw the initial gameplay and the music starts to play.

Furthermore, throughout your journey, you’ll find a lot of different puzzles. Some are really obvious in their answers, while others are not. You’re left solely to guess based on the visuals, and in some puzzles, you’re given the option to press a button to get a hint after a while, with the exception of overworld puzzles. Even the beginning tutorial puzzle took a bit for me but once i realized it was just process elimination it became quite easy.

The soundtrack of this game is an absolute banger and probably my second favorite thing about the game other than the Norse theme which is also one of my favorite mythologies. This game length is 10 hours so not the longest game in the world but enough to get involved in this beautiful revenge story.