Eastward Crab Boss

[Edward]

Where John inevitably gets pulled are dungeon-like scenes where you fight enemies and solve puzzles. In combat John swings a frying pan, bashing enemies with quick swipes or using a charge attack to do one big heavy swing aimed in a direction you indicate with the control stick. There is no block button or dodge button. You either move where the enemies or their projectiles are not, or you just mash the attack button fast enough to kill them all before they do anything. Your health meter consists of three hearts and grows larger each time you beat a boss or you collect four heart upgrades from treasure chests in the environment. While most standard enemies can be defeated with pan swings, bosses usually have a weakness you must exploit by solving a small combat puzzle or environmental puzzle. The second boss for example is a crab monster that darts between four tunnels in the corners of a room. Near each of the tunnel entrances is a switch that activates when struck with your pan. By striking all the switches while the crab is in a tunnel, a burst of air will launch it out and leave it vulnerable so you can damage it with a few swings.

“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, lookinground. The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inkyblack, and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily thepale white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red andstarless, and south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowingscarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun,red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a harsh reddishcolour, and all the trace of life that I could see at first wasthe intensely green vegetation that covered every projectingpoint on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich greenthat one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plantswhich like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, andsaw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting andflittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some lowhillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that Ishivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Lookinground me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be areddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I sawthe thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can youimagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legsmoving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its longantennae, like carters’ whips, waving and feeling, and itsstalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallicfront? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainlybosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there.I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickeringand feeling as it moved.

“As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me,I felt a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there.I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment itreturned, and almost immediately came another by my ear. Istruck at this, and caught something threadlike. It was drawnswiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and Isaw that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab thatstood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on theirstalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vastungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending uponme. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed amonth between myself and these monsters. But I was still on thesame beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped.Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in thesombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

“So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides ofa thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth'sfate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger andduller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebbaway. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the hugered-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth partof the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for thecrawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach,save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless.And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me.Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To thenorth-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of thesable sky and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkishwhite. There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, withdrifting masses further out; but the main expanse of that saltocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.

“I looked about me to see if any traces of animal liferemained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me inthe saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth orsky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified thatlife was not extinct. A shallow sandbank had appeared in the seaand the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw someblack object flopping about upon this bank, but it becamemotionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had beendeceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The starsin the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle verylittle.

“Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of thesun had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in thecurve. I saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I staredaghast at this blackness that was creeping over the day, and thenI realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or theplanet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, atfirst I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline meto believe that what I really saw was the transit of an innerplanet passing very near to the earth.

The art should jump out at players right away. What may not grab the attention of players is the beginning of the game. There is a prologue and a full chapter set in the underground before John and his party escapes to the surface.

The character design deserves its own special mention from the graphics and the pixel art. This is where the EarthBound influences really come into play. It is one of the most uniquely designed worlds of 2021 from the environments to the characters.

The animations and facial expressions really help sell these zany characters well from the smallest NPCs to the main leads. Players will surely wish to drink up every encounter with these characters.

These moments are fleeting though. Eastward is clearly aping from retro highlights and one of the classic design choices of these 90s games was to silence their leads like Ness in EarthBound. It was okay then but distracting now.

Like the Zelda series on which this game draws heavily from, the boss encounters are well-thought-out puzzles. The first big example is a robot right before the party breaks free of the underground.

Players have to force it to suck up bombs before they can attack it directly. The next boss is a giant hermit crab that needs to be forced out of hiding by releasing steam valves. These are only a taste of the great boss battles awaiting players in Eastward.

There are in-game achievements in Eastward. If players are gaming on other systems, these achievements correlate to actual console rewards. The Switch still does not have anything like that so the inclusion of them on that console can feel hollow.

Another Switch game from 2021, Disgaea 6, had in-game achievements as well. The big difference is that these achievements contained tangible rewards for the game which would have been nice to see in Eastward as well.

Calvin and I were working as caretakers or maintenance men at the home of Richard Nixon. I have the sense he was not yet president or, if he in fact had already been president, he had not left that job in disgrace. He seemed happy. He smiled and laughed. He was a good boss. He wore Bermuda shorts and a plaid sport shirt with red in it.

We lived in a guest house by the pool. Several neighbors came over to apologize for missing a party. I was focused on moving a potted avocado tree to a new place on the opposite side of the pool but was having trouble with it. There were blossoms on the tree but they were pink. Even though I am pretty sure that avocado blossoms are not pink I am very sure that this was an avocado tree. I was having trouble moving it partly because it was heavy but also because its branches were tangled in those of another tree, possibly a magnolia.

I saw a red door at the top of a staircase and thought that door might lead somewhere interesting so I approached the staircase, only to find that most of the stairs were missing. Only every fourth or fifth step existed; otherwise there was just blackness. I managed, though, by holding the handrail and hopping energetically from step to step, to reach a landing and the red door.

Opening the door I found myself at the reception area of a seafood restaurant, a modern-day American seafood restaurant and not a 1950s-era French one. A hostess greeted me and asked me to follow her to my table. I do not recall being surprised to find Calvin already seated at the table, perusing the menu. His back was to the brick wall.

She turned the crab over, examining it from every angle, but found no meat. We watched as she picked and poked, peeling away tiny bits of shell and membrane, in her search for meat, but she never managed to produce even the tiniest bit.

Vavelia Southwest Ocean is a location within the ocean area of Witch Spring R. It can be found by venturing out from South Island using Eison and heading eastward until an island with a large group of crabs comes into view. Head north from the crab island until the screen changes.

The gorgeous, retro-inspired RPG Eastward will finally be making its way to where it belongs: A physical version, to sit on our nerd-shelves just like its inspirations Earthbound and The Legend of Zelda.

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