Skip to main content

Never Alone gets demastered, coming to PS3 and Vita

never alone ps3 vita neveraloneswimming
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Never Alone, Upper One Games’ critically divisive puzzle-platformer about an Alaskan Native girl named Nuna and her fox companion, was given away as part of April’s PlayStation Plus offering for the PlayStation 4, but now the game is making its way to new — or, rather, old — platforms: the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita, and it’s getting some fresh DLC to go with it.

“One of our hopes for Never Alone is that the game introduces Alaska Native culture to audiences that may not have been exposed to it before,” says Brian Alspach of publisher E-Line Games. “To that end, our team has started work on bringing Never Alone to two additional PlayStation platforms: PS3 and PS Vita.” Currently, in addition to the PS4, the game is available on PC, Mac, Xbox One, and Wii U.

The Vita and PS3 versions of Never Alone are expected this fall, but new DLC arrives much sooner. Never Alone: Foxtales, a three-level story based on the tale of “The Two Coastal Brothers,” arrives July 28, and takes place in the “nautical” environment of Northwest Alaska, which means “things aren’t always as uniformly snowy as in the original game,” according to Alspach.

Developer Upper One Games is the “first U.S. based indigenous-owned game company,” and its name refers to Alaska’s status as the sole state located north of the “Lower 48.” Never Alone was created in collaboration with “nearly 40 Alaska Native elders, storytellers, and community members” to ensure an authentic experience representative of the Alaskan culture and indigenous people. It also includes more than 30 minutes of interview footage with the Alaskan community, where they “share stories and wisdom about their culture values, and the amazing Arctic world encountered by players.” We called Never Alone “one of the few examples of a non-European or East Asian culture’s stories being explored in gaming.”

Editors' Recommendations

Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
Volgarr the Viking 2 will take you back to your Ghosts ‘n Goblins days
A viking slashes a tree in Volgarr the Viking 2.

Developer Digital Eclipse is working on a surprising project: Volgarr the Viking 2. The 2D retro sequel will launch on August 6 for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

The news is an out of left field reveal. The first Volgarr the Viking game released in 2013 and was made as an ode to 1080s classics like Ghosts 'n Goblins. Despite being a small release, it sold over 1 million copies over the past decade. As revealed during today's Guerrilla Collective stream, the series is coming back with a new sequel by Digital Eclipse, the team behind this year's Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.

Read more
3 Days of Play PS Plus games to try this weekend (June 7-9)
Key art for Streets of Rage 4.

June 2024 is shaping up to be a pretty great month for PlayStation players. Not only are we coming off an entertaining State of Play showcase, but a new Days of Play initiative surrounding all the video game showcases this month is bringing a lot of new PS Plus additions with it. Many of those games hit PS Plus this week, and three in particular stand out to us.

For owners of Sony's oft-neglected PlayStation VR2, the first game is one of its rare exclusives that take full advantage of the headset's eye-tracking by seeing how often players blink. The next is a new PS Plus Essential game that's a revival of Sega's classic beat-'em-up series for the modern gaming era. Finally, the last title is an atmospheric and eerie fishing game that should entice fans of Lovecraftian horror.
Before Your Eyes

Read more
3 first-party Xbox Game Pass games to try this weekend (June 7-9)
Gears 5 Kait Hero Close Up

Microsoft will hold an Xbox Games Showcase and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Direct. this Sunday. These shows will provide a much better idea of what to expect from Xbox over the course of the next year or two. That's really needed right now, as Microsoft has struggled to keep online discussions around Xbox positive as it went multiplatform with some games, laid off thousands of developers, and outright shut down the developers of Hi-Fi Rush and Redfall. Based on leaks and my personal expectations for the showcase, there are three games you can play on Xbox Game Pass this weekend to prepare for the event.

The first is the latest first-person shooter in a long-running series by id Software that might be getting a medieval-set spinoff. After that, we have the fifth entry in a sci-fi Xbox series that still looks fantastic on Xbox Series X/S even though it came out in 2019. Finally, you can prepare for Avowed with the latest RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, a satirical sci-fi game where player choice is critical.
Doom Eternal

Read more