Eastshade is a unique Wide-Open Sandbox game, developed by Eastshade Studios and released on February 21st, 2019 for PC through Steam, with versions for PS4 and Xbox One released on October 21st, 2019.
It has a unique premise in that the game is completely devoid of violence and instead, the player is an artist, who arrives on the fantasy island of Eastshade with the goal of creating four grand paintings that are supposed to represent his mother's memories of the place. However, they get shipwrecked right before arriving on the island and thus lose most of their possessions and money. As such, you lack even the means to make paintings and must support yourself through more conventional means at first, and will need to settle for humbler orders from the island's residents before you get to the four vistas you are after. Moreover, each painting you get requires a certain amount of inspiration to draw, so you need to be judicious about picking the best view, and not simply painting every single thing you come across.
This game was also preceded by a short 2017 prequel of sorts, Leaving Lyndow. However, it is both very brief (taking up half an hour at most) and lacks Eastshade's core mechanics like painting, and thus is typically disregarded as a glorified demo even by Eastshade's fans.
No relation to another 2019 game, Grimshade.
Tropes present in this game:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Osha. Everything you sell him, he buys for 1 glowstone. And if he has something you want? Well, his other name is 500-Glowstone-Osha.
- Arcadia: Eastshade is a nearly untouched island with just one city, one town, and a few small houses. The rest is Scenery Porn filled with Ghibli Hills.
- Bait-and-Switch: The "Elixir of Life" quest. The setup is between potential Snake Oil Salesman Melek and Omnidisciplinary Scientist Zarah about whether or not Malek's spring water-based Elixir of Life actually has life-prolonging properties. At the end of the quest, you traveled across the island to five springs, met a man who was over 138 years old thanks to the spring water, Zarah even starts a long monologue on the amazing properties of spring water, so the reveal is obviously that the elixir is fake. Interestingly, it is NOT ineffective because the spring water is useless (which Zarah acknowledges as possibly actually having life-enhancing powers), but because he uses rain water.)
- Cash Gate: Leaving the first major location of Lyndow and its surroundings requires going through a bridge connecting it to the rest of the island, and paying a hefty toll to do so.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Anika. She makes owl noises every time you talk to her.
- Convenient Eclipse: Played with. There is an eclipse every single day around noon, but at the start, the game literally stops time at 10:47 until the player goes to the gazebo and triggers the first eclipse.
- Cozy Mystery: The Thief of Sinkwood Inn mystery.
- Demonic Possession: The "Dormant in the Ice" quest has three scientists haunted by shadowy figures and creepy whispering ever since they found ruins in the ice. The ending reveals they suffered from a massive ancient Mushroom Samba.
- Dialogue Tree: Present, with both the moments when a player picks a general conversation topic and gets a response about it, and simple responses to other characters' questions that are mostly for flavour.
- Disability Alibi: Radmila can't have been the thief of the Sinkwood Inn as she is bound to bed.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: The second you reach the Sinkwood Inn, you get informed about this as you are declared detective. Amusingly, when the detective finally arrives, you can literally name everyone as the suspect, including the victim.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: A lot of people in Lyndow see a light in the night in the Abandoned Tower and you even find horror stories written about it. It's the hideout of the Architect of Lyndow who lives there ever since he got fed up with being ridiculed for his disfigurement.
- Exposed to the Elements: Averted, as getting cold does play a role in the game, and painting during cold nights is highly inadvisable if you don't have a coat.
- Facial Horror: The Architect of Lyndow is said to be disfigured since birth. When meeting him, one can see that his left face side is hanging low.
- Fair-Play Whodunnit: The Sinkwood Inn mystery, though it is a bit obscure. Three characters mention that someone was outside, you can find a sale contract at the border of the island and she has mud-covered boots.
- First-Person Ghost: Played absolutely straight in both the main game and Leaving Lyndow.
- First-Person Snapshooter: The player character is a painter, so unsurprisingly the gameplay involves painting, which, in practice, is just like taking a screenshot which is then rendered into a painting. The main quest is making a painting of 4 particular places, and several sidequests require you to make paintings.
- Fishing Minigame: Present, and getting good at fishing is a good way of getting money when your character is short of resources and/or inspiration to paint.
- Funny Animal: Pretty much every inhabitant of Eastshade is one, though they are done in a more subdued style than is usually the case. The player character is almost certainly one of them as well.
- G-Rated Drug: The Dream Tea. You drink it, fall asleep, and have the wildest dreams. There's even a group trying to forbid its use.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You will be asked for the player character's name during the very first conversation.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: Help, Eshan's head is in a jug. Don't Ask.
- Hidden Elf Village: Alejo's underground city full of racoon people.
- Honest John's Dealership: Kai is accused of this, such as overcharging his potions and using endangered plants. Averted as, while he did overcharge years ago, he doesn't anymore and never used endangered plants and if you help him prove both, his apothecary actually starts to thrive.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: The architect suffers from this due to his facial disfigurement. Most interactions are a mixture of Ungrateful Bastard, Don't You Dare Pity Me!, and Glory Hound. Once you give him a painting of Lyndow, he gives a Grudging "Thank You" and in the epilogue, he sends a letter in which he properly appreciates your painting and actually recommends you to other architects.
- Item Crafting: The player needs to craft their canvas and picture frames. They are also able to brew teas that provide various effects on their inspiration. At one point they also need to build a raft in order to cross a river.
- Justified Tutorial: The player is introduced to the process of canvas-crafting when their protagonist decides to teach a little kid how to do it.
- Lesbian Jock: You can ensure that two of the bear people date each other by sending them to a picnic at a hot spring.
- Light and Mirrors Puzzle: Mudwillow's Riddle.
- Mad Oracle: Roshanara. She just acts like one to see if you would pick one of the endangered Black Thistles.
- The Marvelous Deer: A magical elk features in the second of the stories recounted by entertainers at the Tarnished Teapot.
- Mistaken for Evidence: A few things in the Sinkwood Inn mystery are a Red Herring, such as the sale contract for the Inn, the stolen relic of Vadim, the absence of the student, and the dismissal letter of the historian.
- Mushroom Samba: The truth behind the "Dormant in the Ice" quest.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Hot Balloon pilot doesn't understand why people don't want to fly with a balloon called "Sky Drop", "Bursting Bubble" or Never-land.
- No Antagonist: The game is simply about your artist's personal quest, while the rest of Eastshade is living their daily lives and has no interest in stopping you.
- Rhymes on a Dime: Mudwillow. She probably can talk normally as she taught Alejo how to speak sky-people language.
- Sea Monster: Played for laughs. Ol' Pop is said to be a massive fish in the lake who consumes valuables and almost kills people. He's only slightly bigger than other sandfish and perfectly harmless.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Malek claims to have an elixir made of spring water that can make you immortal. While spring water DOES grant immortality, his elixir is just rainwater.
- Stolen Good, Returned Better: In a way. Kai stole vegetables from Fynn due to lack of money. After you help them back into business, they promise to repay the damage.
- Street Urchin: Two children steal apples from Toma's farm due to hunger. If you tell Toma, he lets them stay with him properly and if you rescue their shipwrecked father, they can go home proper.
- The Food Poisoning Incident: Tam accidentally sold Toxic Tubers as Zucchinis. He begs you to collect them before people get sick. You can get one before it is eaten, one client noticed what it is and used it for something more appropriate, one person says they already
used it (and make sure to say it was not eaten) and for one person is already suffering through the worst pain he ever had. - Walking the Earth: You meet a man in Lyndow Inn claiming to be on a big and dangerous adventure. He walked from Nava to Lyndow with the most dangerous thing on the way being the cold if he decides to walk at night.
- Weird Moon: A very large, stationary one, which eclipses the sun every day at noon. In the ice cave dream, both the moon and the sun appear as featureless black metallic spheres.
