How many games have an elderly protagonist? Most often we find ourselves playing as a brave and attractive young man, a superpowered teenager, or sometimes a cranky father. But what about an old man who walks with a stick?
Well, that’s who you play as in The Eternal Life of Goldman, a platformer adventure from developer Weppy Studio and publisher THQ Nordic. And if an old man might seem like a slow, weak character lacking in ability, you’re forgetting the walking stick. Because the obvious thing to do with a walking stick is to bounce on it. Naturally – this is a video game, after all.
If this sounds reminiscent of the NES classic DuckTales, you’d be right. In fact, the entire game is a throwback to the past, but with a modern twist. It’s not just a stick, but a multifunctional tool with three interchangeable parts: the handle, the point, and the stick itself. By collecting new parts the old man gains new abilities, such as a hook for interacting with the aforementioned bouncing and floating platforms – or, as with a boss, pulling his tail to stun him.
This upgradable stick has a lot of potential, though the game won’t be strictly structured as a Metroidvania. It will feature challenging and precise platforming and intuitive exploration, but there won’t be any backtracking involved. Instead, the world consists of a central hub with various individual but connected areas to explore via linear progression.
And those areas are gorgeous. It’s the visuals that give the game a great first impression, all hand-drawn frame-by-frame to give the feel of an old animated film with the action of a classic platformer. Cuphead It’s an obvious comparison, but the gameplay here is much more accessible.
showed me, GamescomThe opening scene from the announcement trailer (above) and a portion of that first level can be played. The camera swoops and dives as it chases an ape creature through what looks like an oppressively humid jungle and into a dangerous cave of cruel traps and crumbling floors – all very Indiana Jones. Then as the jungle and its inhabitants burn, the old man hero appears in view and we slip seamlessly into gameplay.
From there it’s the usual stuff of bouncing on floating platforms and devising new ways to cross the ever-widening chasm, with some light puzzle solving thrown in. Yet even wrapped up in those sequences, it’s a joy to play.
It’s clear a lot of work has gone into this – development began in 2017 and the team consists of around 25 people. Of course, such a hand-crafted visual style takes time but the effect is well worth it, with the game’s foreground and background giving it the feel of a bustling forest full of life with a surprising amount of detail. It’s a shame the developer also has to explicitly state that no AI has been used in the creation of the game, but this is 2024 after all.
So, come for the visuals, but stay for the existential philosophy. The aging hero isn’t just a jokester beating enemies with a cane. This is an opportunity to tell a story that explores the meaning of life and death through ancient legends – Greek, Jewish and Mesopotamian folklore. I didn’t get to see much of the narrative in this short preview, but the prospect of it reminded me of novels like Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea or Jonas Jonasson’s The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. There are already obvious touches, too: for example, there are checkpoint phoenixes, which is one of those things that is so smart yet so obvious and fits so well with the game’s themes.
The developer promises that the game will feature bizarre enemies, nightmares and surprises in the quest to kill God, as well as some sort of survivalist twist. And that’s what attracted me the most about the game. The Eternal Life of Goldman is set to be an inter-generational platformer, with gameplay and visuals that blend old and new, and a thought-provoking plot. I’m ready to jump into it.
