This Week In Retro: Anodyne

February 4, 2013: Young, dumb, and full of dust

by Diamond Feit

After more than three decades, I think we've all simply grown accustomed to the series over the years, but The Legend of Zelda is a strange affair. The hero, inexplicably named Link, has to save the world from evil, but Hyrule as seen in the original game lies in ruins, as if Ganon has already won. Later games would give us entire villages of civilians to meet and quests to fulfill, but that first game drops players into an empty world with nothing but a tiny shield and says "figure it out."

I'm not griping about the matter, as expecting players to fill in the blanks and make their own fun was a very common tactic for video games in the 1980s. Yet even as storytelling techniques evolved to include dialogue boxes and map icons that guide players towards their objectives, Zelda games kept things weird simply by retaining so many elements from the series' starting point. Why is the hero always named Link? Why is the captured princess always named Zelda? And while he takes many forms, what keeps Ganon coming back over and over again to conquer Hyrule?

While I know official answers purport to explain these mysteries, the short version is that it doesn't matter; so long as fans continue to purchase these games, Nintendo could change the hero's name or outfit or any of it without consequence. Indeed, many entries in the series allow the player to call themselves anything they like, as the character's primary function is that of a cipher. In the strictest sense, Link isn't the hero of Hyrule, you are the moment you press start on your controller.

As we draw closer and closer to the highly-anticipated next Legend of Zelda blockbuster, I want to turn back the clock ten years to an indie title that openly borrows from Nintendo's fantasy franchise but also leans into the nonsensical nature of Link's exploits. The game promises a hero and a villain and a land in danger but doesn't concern itself with giving any of these things depth, preferring instead to leave things as vague (and as weird) as possible. Thus, when Anodyne debuted in 2013, it delivered a seldom-seen lo-fi Zelda-like experience, one that eschewed fantasy for surreality.

Anodyne cribs many familiar beats from the Zelda playbook right off the bat. The hero is named Young, a generic title for a generic guy who never speaks for himself. After a brief tutorial segment where an unseen narrator tells the player where to go and what buttons to press, Young meets Sage, the Village Elder, who delivers the closest thing to clear-cut exposition that the game will offer:

"You have been summoned here because The Darkness has spread across The Land. The Darkness seeks The Legendary Briar, to use The Briar's power for evil. You must reach it first. You must protect The Briar."

Zelda fans should already see the parallels at work, as aside from altering the proper nouns, Anodyne's story summary could just as easily be applied to almost any adventure Link has ever had.

However, Anodyne strays from its inspiration with its use of dry humor and by restricting free access to The Land. The jokes kick in immediately, as Sage looks like the typical video game wiseman, but he shows no patience and little faith in our hero. Should Young speak to Sage more than once without heeding his words to move along, it will exasperate him, eventually driving him to say "just go in the damn door!" There's also a statue which consistently appears alongside Sage that, if spoken to, will usually undercut whatever message Sage has delivered, such as declaring him "Village Elder in name only, for he is neither."

The Land of Anodyne does contain a series of interconnected areas, but Young first appears in The Nexus, an interdimensional space littered with portals floating in a black void. Only one portal initially allows him entry, but as Young explores The Land he will find and activate more portals, creating an entire network of shortcuts. The player can also opt to return to The Nexus at any time; this cuts down on backtracking, prevents Young from getting trapped in dead ends, and generally adds to the overall disjointed atmosphere of Anodyne. Just as its non-descript name indicates, The Land never feels like a real space, instead remaining a disparate collection of corridors.

Nothing sums up Anodyne's status as "Zelda but weird" better than Young's weapon of choice. Link famously carries a sword and shield, along with an entire sackful of magical items and tools he uses to defend Hyrule from evil in his legendary battles. Young arrives in The Land bereft of possessions, and must avoid a few monsters before the first treasure chest he finds provides him with a broom. Not a magic broom, not one adorned with razor-sharp bristles or an iron shaft, just a broom. It dutifully damages monsters when Young thrusts it forward, but it remains a broom, and can also collect dust when needed. Anodyne makes clever use of dust as a secondary tool; it blocks certain projectiles, serving as a makeshift shield for Young, and can act as a flotation aid to allow for extended travel across deep water.

Sage can hardly believe his eyes when he sees what weapon Young manages to collect, but unlike Link's wooden sword in Zelda games, the broom is no temporary solution. While the player can locate two enhancements for Young's broom to extend the length and width of its attack range, Young never finds a proper weapon to replace the broom, nor does it ever grow stronger. It certainly never lets him fly; Young is no witch. No, the broom remains a broom and Anodyne's sole means of combat.

With its odd sensibilities, quirky humor, and the fact that most bosses verbally taunt you before battle, Anodyne's closest analogue in The Legend of Zelda series is Link's Awakening. Yet even that game, for all its eccentricities, clung to the Zelda formula with numbered dungeons that contain puzzles to solve and important upgrades to Link's abilities. It also tells a clear-cut story with a beginning, middle, and end, one with very little room for ambiguity.

Anodyne applies its dream-logic across the board, however, as shadows silently stalk select screens, hordes of people muddle about in others, and scattered signs designed to point the way around The Land all have smudged writing, invalidating their purpose. The conversations Link has with the dungeon bosses in Link's Awakening gradually reveal the truth of Koholint Island, but nothing the villains tell Young in Anodyne express any coherent narrative. As is the case for any indie game with an abstract story, there are naturally YouTube videos out there purporting to "explain" the entirety of Anodyne, but this is as subjective as game storytelling gets.

Again, I'm not griping about any of these choices. A little bit of mystery goes a long way, and one of the tragic consequences of our present sequel/prequel/reboot era is the extermination of the unspoken or unexplained. For 20 years, Boba Fett was one of the most popular science-fiction characters despite appearing in just one-and-a-half Star Wars films where he died a ruthlessly embarrassing death. Then Attack of the Clones decided the audience needed to see Boba as a child and learn his father served as the template for the Empire's clone army; these details did not make Boba Fett any cooler. Flash forward another 20 years and Boba Fett stars in his very own series which has him training with Sand People, recruiting space bikers, and generally doing everything but live up to his reputation as a bad-ass.

Playing Anodyne today feels like a breath of fresh air, as the player never learns who Young is or what The Darkness wants. Young does eventually come face-to-face with The Briar, but their encounter raises more questions than it answers. Even Sage, who appears after the last boss battle, offers Young faint praise for his efforts rather than any kind of concrete epilogue. Looking up interviews with the developers, I was surprised to learn the project started off even more abstruse, as co-creator Melos Han-Tani "initially wanted no dialogue, healthless gameplay, and sort of abstract areas" but found this too great a challenge to implement. This revelation that a game about fighting shadows in a dream world with a broom represents the compromised version of what Anodyne could have been explains a lot.

The best thing about Anodyne, in my humble opinion, is that ten years later we are not stuck waiting for news of Anodyne Part 6: Sage's Reckoning. Instead, developer Analgesic Productions has continued to make thoughtful, playful titles that tell stories in their own way, all while remaining a small team working within their means. They did produce a sequel in 2019 which carries over certain 2D elements but notably adds three-dimension gameplay to the experience and does not star Young or any of the primary characters from the original.

As a Link's Awakening fan and an avid supporter of indie developers, I know I am biased towards Anodyne and games of its caliber, but I think it holds up to scrutiny because of its simplicity. The original title remains available on PC and Switch, often dropping in price during seasonal sales to impulse-buy levels. If you're reading this column during Anodyne's actual anniversary weekend, Analgesic Productions is literally giving away free copies over on itch.io. In an even more shocking move, the developers released the source code to Anodyne in 2020, making it freely available for any curious parties to dissect, edit, or remix. That's a far more exciting legacy than any number of iterative, lore-heavy sequels could ever offer.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.