Eastward: Octopia Review - Screenshot 1 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

A few years ago, a cute new action-adventure game called Eastward released on most platforms, blending some appealing EarthBound-esque visuals with a narrative-driven game loop that’s vaguely reminiscent of the older Zelda games. We really enjoyed it, despite its flaws, and it seems that developer Pixpil had some more ideas it wanted to explore for the unique world it built, as it’s now released a sizable DLC called Eastward: Octopia. This siloed expansion adds a lot more than just a few new levels and scenes, effectively acting as a half-sequel of sorts that completely changes up the gameplay. We’d even go so far as to say that it’s a superior game to the original.

Octopia’s narrative takes place in an alternate universe separate from the main timeline of Eastward; in this world, things are decidedly cheerier and brighter, while there isn’t a hint of miasma to be found anywhere. The story kicks off with Sam and John arriving by train at a mysterious place called Octopia, an abandoned amusement park that’s long since fallen to ruin. The two purchase a small house and a plot of land there to start afresh, and set out to rebuild Octopia to its former glory through their farming efforts. Plenty of alternate-universe counterpart characters from the main plot of Eastward eventually move there to join them in this endeavor, but everyone is just a little different in this iteration.

Eastward: Octopia Review - Screenshot 2 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

We won’t spoil too much, but it’s heavily implied that the narrative eventually ties back in with Eastward’s main story, though newcomers don’t necessarily need to know the full story to get the most out of Octopia. For the most part, this is a simple, cute tale about a growing rural community coming together to build their home, but those of you who played through the full story of the main campaign will notice some details and easter eggs that indicate a closer connection. Most importantly, the narrative here is decidedly less verbose than the base game, and this much stronger focus on pacing is a welcome improvement.

Gameplay in Octopia diverges quite a bit from the narrative-driven, Zelda-esque structure of the main game, replacing it instead with some good old-fashioned farm sim mechanics. Each day is just over ten minutes long, and you keep John and Sam busy with activities like tending to your animals and tilling your soil, while reinvesting the profits from the goods you sell in town into upgrades for your property and more seeds to plant. What you do with your day is left largely up to you, there’s no rush, but unlocking more upgrades and getting more people to move to town is gated by fulfilling requests by townsfolk for construction projects or meals you can cook for them.

Eastward: Octopia Review - Screenshot 3 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Like most farm sims, Octopia starts out a little slow, but it doesn’t take long for you to fall into a nice rhythm as you start setting short and mid-term goals and diligently accomplishing them. Once things start to open up more and you have more residents in the town, tasks start to pick up quite a bit to the point where it almost feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Yet no matter what you choose to focus on, you’re always nicely rewarded for your efforts, creating a wonderful sense of progression as you watch the ramshackle town slowly turn into a place that feels more like home.

To help break up the repetition of farm tasks somewhat, Octopia also features minigames that offer a bit of gameplay variety. Fishing, for example, tasks you with ‘chasing’ fish around the perimeter of a pond with your fishing pole’s bobber, with rarer fish having more deft and swift swimming patterns to evade capture. In another example, you can extract rare ore from a mine by sending down a cutesy remotely-operated drone, which you navigate around caves by playing an old-school arcade game that tasks you with dropping bombs to loosen deposits and unlock deeper floors. We appreciated the gameplay diversity offered in Octopia—it isn’t overwhelming, but there are just enough activities to avoid things getting too repetitive.

Eastward: Octopia Review - Screenshot 4 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

The visuals were always one of the highlights of the original Eastward, and we’re happy to report that their quality has not dipped in the slightest for this expansion. The detailed spritework and animation is some of the best in the business, doing a great job of showcasing each character’s unique personality and quirks. Meanwhile, the bright, cozy environments feel right at home with the farm sim aesthetic, while the later biomes you unlock and visit help to add some nice graphical diversity. It’s tough to say whether Octopia looks better than the base game, but at the very least it continues to set the bar for what a hi-bit 2D art style can accomplish.

Octopia isn’t without some relatively minor issues. One important problem is that there are some noticeable performance hiccups to contend with. We had a few times where the game completely crashed on us, wiping out any progress that we made on that day, and we noticed occasional but sudden frame drops that can cause you to lose a fish or cause John and Sam to jump forward a few steps when tending their crops. The frame drops aren’t too detrimental given the overall slow pace of the gameplay, but they are a persistent annoyance that dragged down the experience a bit.

Eastward: Octopia Review - Screenshot 5 of 5
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

There are also some missing quality-of-life features that make Octopia a clunkier experience compared to its genre contemporaries. For example, when you’re cooking dishes—one of your main sources of income—there’s no option to mass produce multiples of a dish if you have a lot of ingredients and want more than one, so you’re forced to navigate the menu and reselect the dish repeatedly to make one at a time. Such issues don’t enormously affect the experience, but little things like this can add up to disrupt the gameplay flow, especially during extended sessions.

And though this is less of a direct criticism, we’d like to highlight that Octopia is only available to those who have bought Eastward first, confusingly. Despite being effectively a complete, self-contained, 15-20 hour farm sim, this isn’t available for separate purchase like other standalone DLCs such as Demon Turf: Neon Splash or Shovel Knight: King of Cards. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it may come as a disappointment for some; not only is Octopia overall a more enjoyable experience than the base game, but at the price of only six bucks, it’s a steal when you consider all the content it has to offer.

Conclusion

Eastward: Octopia may not bring many new ideas to a crowded genre, but this is an impressively well-executed expansion that nicely ticks all the boxes for a satisfying and relaxing farm sim. Although it has some rougher edges, the decent gameplay variety, interesting story, gorgeous visuals, and surprising amount of content all come together to make this one an easy recommendation to any fans of the original Eastward. Even for those of you who fell off your playthrough of the original for one reason or another, we’d encourage you to consider coming back for Octopia—this is a much better-paced game and, some performance issues aside, it’s lost none of the charm that made the original so popular.