Au Sable nominally has a story if you look in the text file that comes with the game. A town called Harmonia has disappeared from this world, and you must find it by traveling through surreal, dangerous, and terrifying locales in order to find it, being followed by the "eyes of memory" as you do, whatever that means. The game makes as much sense, in regards to story, as its predecessor did, which only serves to heighten the anxiety and tension brought on by the visuals, audio, and gameplay.

In regards to said graphics and sounds, Au Sable manages to make itself much more vibrant than All Of Our Friends Are Dead while still maintaining that incredibly garish and nightmarish atmosphere. The graphics are once again pixelated, but the details and vastly improved animations make this a much prettier game. The designs of the environment have also been improved a lot, with more colors and complex visual structures spread throughout the game. The sound is improved in much the same way, with even creepier music and much more appropriate sound effects than the previous game. When you play through surreal, ever-changing landscape as glitchy and creepy music fades in an out of the background, you will definitely see how much better Au Sable is.

The gameplay of Au Sable starts off very different from All Of Our Friends Are Dead. You do not get a gun at first, and must platform around and avoid enemies as your work your way through. Following behind you are two floating red eyes, which trigger certain blocks to open doors and perform other actions. They also fit into the eye sockets of certain disembodied heads, although nothing is explained in the game that you can use them for this. The game also has a rudimentary in-game tutorial in how to solve puzzles, although you have to read the text file that came with the game in order to know the controls.

Once you pick up a gun, the game plays much more like All Of Our Friends Are Dead with a few minor differences. The first is that you are not using a long-range machine-gun, but rather a shotgun with a very low range. In order to eliminate enemies, you must get right up in their faces, which is incredibly dangerous. Quicksave and quickload are your friend, and are bound to F5 and F8, respectively. Later on you get a machine-gun which is more useful, but you can't kill enemies from an incredible distance either. It's a little nicer than having to get right up in an enemy's face though. Also, if you are having difficulty aiming, press backspace to turn on the crosshair. The developer turned it off initially to represent the character's unfamiliarity with guns, but if the game is too hard, adding crosshairs will probably ease it a bit.

It can't be said enough that Au Sable is incredibly disturbing. This is not a game you want to play with little kids around, or if you are easily frightened by the unknown. It portrays the same feeling of anxiety, mystery, and horror that All Of Our Friends Are Dead did, but does so in a way that exceeds its predecessor in just about every area. Where All Of Our Friends Are Dead was scary but finishable in a single sitting, Au Sable actually forced me to stand up and walk around for a bit to get my nerves back in order. It's a freeware pixelated platformer that manages to be more disconcerting than just about every other survival horror game ever made, possibly even combined.

Au Sable is better than its predecessor in numerous aspects, but still has a few issues. For one, there is still no autosave when you quit, so if you haven't quicksaved, you're out of luck and have to start from the beginning again. It was one of the major problems with the first game, so it's a surprise that the developer did not change it. The controls are still a bit finicky, especially if you have the crosshair turned off, and getting the eyes following you around to react appropriately is incredibly difficult at times. Finally, it is once again quite short and almost begs from a browser adaptation, but it is doubtful if either of these will change. However, the graphics are greatly improved and the general feel of the game has been amplified ten times between All Of Our Friends Are Dead and Au Sable, so it ends up being improved and expanded overall.

Au Sable is, in short, one of those games that doesn't really hit you hard in the gameplay department, but manages to screw with you and make its mark in the atmosphere department. It is a continuation on the themes present in All Of Our Friends Are Dead. It's certainly not a game you want to play through more than once for the same reasons, but it should almost be required for everyone to at least give Au Sable a try. It's a great indicator of the developer's progress from a purely art-focused style into a perfect blend of gameplay and atmosphere. You can download the game from the game's forum thread on TIGsource.

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