Another Sight - Hodge's Journey Review

Another Sight - Hodge’s Journey is a free-to-play companion game to the intriguing indie adventure game, Another Sight.

Another Sight revolves around a teenage girl, Kit, who has lost her sight. As she’s visually impaired, her perspective on the world is completely different from that of others. You play the game through Kit’s eyes, navigating a colourful yet muted view in the worlds of historical greats like Monet and Tesla.

In Another Sight - Hodge’s Journey, you take control of Kit’s compadre in the main game: a cat named Hodge. Hodge clambers his way through some trippy dream-like scenery, dark subways, and factory floors, many of which are seen in the main game.

If you were stumbling across Another Sight - Hodge’s Journey, without having any knowledge of the game it precedes, you’d be a little confused. There’s no plot or backstory to Hodge’s Journey, nor is there any rhyme or reason why you’re navigating this heterochromia ginger cat through these odd locations. The game is available to download separately to the main game and was released afterwards, so there’s a chance you could come across Hodge’s Journey before Another Sight. Despite an independent listing, its simplicity would lead you to believe you were playing a tech demo.

For some, the environments and world that Hodge’s Journey revolves around would be enough to get them intrigued, but the way Hodge handles does little to compliment this positive. Hodge has a handful of moves (he is a cat, after all) that include scaling walls, short and long horizontal jumps, a vertical jump, and - of course - a meow. There’s nothing cat-like about his movement; in part due to the camera that keeps Hodge fixed in the middle of the screen as he moves. The screen seemingly jolts every time he approaches an obstacle or lands on a ledge; a subtle disruption that’s certainly noticeable for such a simple platformer.

The game’s demo vibe hits you straight away. Right off the bat, the main menu has a ‘Buy Another Sight’ button. The in-game menus offer options for subtitles and dialogue volumes but neither of these are present. It feels almost immediately as if elements of Another Sight have been crudely copied and pasted in without little attention. Right at the end of the game, as Hodge disappears behind some foreground Waterloo station scenery, is the abrupt ending that displays a screen essentially reading: ‘Thanks for playing, that’s not all, now buy Another Sight!’ with another purchase link that you can’t hide until clicked.

I was able to give Hodge’s Journey two full playthroughs, due to its 15-20 minute completion time. There’s no element of replayability and the one real ‘puzzle’ in the game is just as frustrating the second time around. Other than basic platform navigation and what’s essentially a simple maze, the ‘rat button’ puzzle is one you know how to complete, but the controls set you back from doing so efficiently. Hodge’s movement is fairly awkward, and if you don’t come to an absolute stop, you’ll jump forwards off a ledge instead of vertically onto a higher ledge. Such a clunky control scheme in a puzzle that involves fairly precise movement is like putting the cat amongst the...well - in this case - rats.

It’s rare to come across this kind of game given the circumstances. It’s not a demo of Another Sight, nor an alpha or beta - it’s a companion game, that masquerades as a prequel. Free to play ‘lite’ versions of games are around, but Hodge’s Journey isn’t that either. It’s a free to download advertisement for a game that plays differently to what it’s advertising - a classification all on its own.

For a game that intends to offer a taster of what’s available in Team Lunar’s main project, it didn’t leave me with much of an appetite to try some more. On the face of it, Hodge’s Journey is a cat that travels through portals and meows at some rats; it serves as a somewhat disjointed appetiser for the main course. Arguably, Another Sight’s appeal for many will be what it offers compared to other indie platformers: a unique visual style, interesting protagonist, and the historical elements, but overall Hodge’s Journey does little to get me excited.