Welcome back to the Games Club. To kick off 2015, let’s all play Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) by Upper One Games, the first in a new genre of “World Games.”

Transcript below the cut.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Games Club! For our first selection of 2015, we’re going to be playing Never Alone from Upper One Games. Never Alone first caught our attention with Upper One Games’ proclamation that it was the first in a new genre of “World Games”–games that were produced with the intent of both exploring and preserving culture in a new medium.

In the case of Never Alone, Upper One Games collaborated with the Alaska Native community to craft a game based on Inupiaq stories.

Never Alone can be played by one or two players. By default, the single player takes on the role of Nuna, a young girl trying to save her village with the help of her friendly fox. Switching between Nuna and the fox, players encounter characters and complete tasks much like those from Inupiaq legends. Lending credence to Never Alone’s aspirations to preserve the culture, each of the puzzles Nuna and Fox encounter is narrated by a master storyteller from the Alaska Native community, in the Inupiaq language.

Unlike previous Games Club selections, we’ll both be playing Never Alone for the first time, and we’re interested to see how Upper One Games will use this unique insight and experience to serve its newly minted “world game” genre.

Never Alone is currently available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PCs. We hope you’ll join us in discovering this new genre.