Creatures of Ava

That might have been a decent exploration game with some basic Metroidvania elements if not for its repetitive gameplay. Developers found one particular mechanic they apparently fell in love with and used it very extensively. I'm talking about interaction with in-game animals: you need to fight errr cure them, tame them with a flute and then lead to some extractor and collect all of them in the end. It is OK, but it is heavily overdone. You cannot travel 50 meters before meeting another group. Then you have either to engage in a fight (one just repeats another with a little variation) or to lure them with a melody. And yes, you have to play a melody mini-game every time you need to attract a healthy animal. Cured animal are attracted to you automatically, thanks for that! And you actually must collect animals to move local story a bit further, so no slacking around here! Sometimes you also have to use animals' abilities to clear a further path, to defeat a particular type of enemy and so on. This part is probably most inventive (despite not really new: reminds a bit about Scrapland), but again it is just tedious to constantly switch between different animals to push one button to perform some action. Miss something? Well, re-visit a level and wait for them to re-spawn.

Creatures of Ava troubles me when trying to review it, because I'm not sure how objective I can be about it. My experience with it was negative, but this is in some part due to it feeling too casual for my tastes. I could see others enjoying this, so I'll try to write down both the good and the bad as objectively as I can. First off, I think the atmosphere of the game is stellar. The environments are beautiful, relaxing, and paired with the music they deliver a very cozy-feeling world. I never felt rushed or threatened, because of how welcoming everything felt. I also really appreciate the designs of both the creatures and the people of Ava. In general, the game's visuals are where it shines the most. The gameplay is simple and straightforward: you have to gather creatures from across this world, as well as photograph them. Though this did not enthuse me, and in fact I found it repetitive, boring and meaningless, I can see many out there finding this fun. I think that for anyone who leans towards more cozy feeling, relaxing games, this combination of pretty visuals with the simple gameplay loop might be perfect. As for the things that I still remain critical about, though, the writing and the story are both fairly awful. Dialogues come across as very awkward, but not because the characters are meant to be awkward. The protagonist keeps asking really stupid questions to the aliens of this world, and generally bordering on disrespect. The aliens talk like a fourteen year old's idea of what a hivemind would sound like. And to top it all off, I am not convinced that the story is not someone's very elaborate Avatar fanfiction. I mean, Ava is pronounced the same as Eywa, and you've got humans who think they know best how to save this random planet... It's fairly obvious, if a little simplistic. Regardless, this is not necessarily a reason against playing the game, especially if you're looking for a cozy world to walk around in, just don't expect anything great as far as the plot goes. I also want to note that I dealt with some performance issues early on in the game, with fps dropping massively, music lagging and my monitors freaking out, which got so bad that I had to drop the graphics to low-medium for the game to function properly. I'm not sure what may have caused this, but you might want to double check if your device can run this before buying. There's also a lot of bugs, particularly after completing the first area of the game, like a lot of clipping through floors and floating next to unwalkable surfaces. I'm told it gets worse further down the line, but in all honesty I can't push myself to keep on playing. Overall, though I do see the appeal, I don't know if I can recommend it. Despite the gorgeous world it offers you to explore, it's a pretty cozy game that lacks substance. I'm assuming anyone who gravitates more towards this type of game may have a much better time with it than me, so if that's you, give it a go. But everyone else should probably steer clear, more so if you're looking for an interesting narrative.

This game is colorful with intuitive controls. From the very first minutes it reminded me of "The Gunk" game. Smilar vibes, similar colors, similar story progression, similar need to resque things when nobody asks for help. Photopgrahy, as a mechanic, is never fun in this game and gets super tedious, and kinda annoying to be honest. If you want to get all achievements, you'll have to take photos of all healthy and corrupted animals, and then to pet them too [of course, pet an animal,.. how innovative... Every freaking game has this stupid mechanic these days... pet your pixels!!! Here! Pet a pixel, how cute... oh ffs]. Imagine going to an alien planet and as soon as you take your first step on the planet's surface - you start petting various beings from the very first minutes... Writing is very bare bones, creativeless and lacks imagination. The first thing you talk about with the unknown people of the planet - their pronouns. Of course! That's the most important thing! Sure! And what's funny, the main writer of this game is extremely woke in real life (go figure) and it shows. One of the main things you do in this game is: rescuing those various animals via fixed rescue robot locations. You do that a lot. In the first area it's kinda ok, later on it becomes like a mini puzzle game in itself. Tedious, simple and repetitive. Funny enough, some of them are bugged. The very first biome has a bot that can take infinite amounts of animals (they respawn as soon as you turn them in), this way you can quickly farm a good amount of xp points if you want. In later biomes - the bot area doesn't even spawn enough animals in order to completely extract everything!.. AND some beasts can get stuck in the terrain.... reloading the game usually helps with this bug. There are 4 biomes (Grasslands, Jungle, Swamp and Dunes) - another super "creative" thing in this game. A random planet has the most overused biomes in gaming history. 0 creativity. First location is probably done the best (from visual and exploration standpoint). No real complains here (except some bugs), but later ones have some serious frame drop issues in certain locations. Unoptimisation at its finest. And bugs. Each new biome = even more bugs than in the previous one. Monsters clipping through terrain, flying pigs stuck in air, invisible blocks making it hard to go through narrow pathways and so on. There are so many dumb bugs in this game that I'm certain that the devs didn't play their game from start to finish a single time. It's actually "amazing" to see. This game only has 5 save slots. 5. On PC. Released in 2024. There are games older than 30 years that let you save in (near)infinite amount of different slots. This game only managed to produce... 5. Funny thing #2. You can always go back to the first [Grasslands] biome anytime (no matter in which chapter you play at the moment), but it's not the case with 2nd/3rd/4th biome. Once you complete the main objective in them - you'll not be able to go back to them later on. So better complete everything you want, or else you'll need to redo a lot of stuff in a whole new playtrough (if you want to 100% it). So. If you are a player who wants to control an insufferable b*tch and all-knowing mf**ker in a story about how "humans are evil", but want to experience how a semi-lesbian with a semi-lesbian friend ((([both unconfirmed though] the writer was not that "brave" like the "The Gunk" writers in that regard))) are so cool that they can fix everything - this game is for you. Go and play it. You'll feel like at home. If not - skip this game. Save your brain from the woke-mind dumb writing and its tedious adventure where you do the same thing in every single location.

Its a fun casual game. If you just want to explore and enjoy the story, you'll have a good time. For the people wanting the 100%, the game sucks.

Creatures of Ava has colorful visuals, and some great writing that makes its alien denizens quite appealing. The story is a bit like Avatar shot through with Buddhist philosophy, so I found it quite predictable (oh no the humans are actually the bad guys I’m shocked, that kind of thing). But when paired with the excellent dialogue I didn’t mind, it’s kinda sweet really. But… the gameplay fell flat for me. This really should hit all my buttons - creatures you can control, Zelda-like flute gameplay, non-combat combat, collectibles, exploration… but it does all that merely okay. I think the desire to make the game skew “cozy” and reduce the difficulty really hampers the game. Specifically, all the crafting and collectibles, extra missions, etc. do not reward the gameplay in any meaningful way. In fact, I was annoyed by all the stuff in my inventory because I didn’t need most of it, so I needed to do inventory management. Rather than adding texture these things became cruft that I wanted to barrel over. I didn’t bother to look around for more missions or stuff because that meant inventory management, so I did the bare minimum to advance the story. It’s a shame, because it’s obvious the developers are competent. If they’d streamlined the gameplay to be truly “cozy” or upped the difficulty a bit I think I would have enjoyed it more. All that said, it’s still a competent experience that has its charms.

Thought it was alright, but not what I was expecting. The store page/trailers make it seem a lot more exciting than it actually is - it's very much a slow "environmental/cleaning" game like The Gunk, Loddlenaut, Island Saver etc. There's no real combat or challenge to the game and I think some players might get bored. It's a loop of learning an ability, taming creatures and using their abilities on basic puzzles, then moving to the next area. There's not much variation to the creatures' abilities so by the end of the 2nd region you've pretty much seen the entire game. The environments look nice and are varied, but unfortunately they all play the same due to the limited number of creature abilities (destroy wall, push block, dig). One major complaint is a lot of the collectibles are missable and you can't revisit areas. The devs said this is due to the story but there's no real reason why you shouldn't be able to revisit after finishing them. The areas don't die or become infected, so what's stopping you? I still enjoyed the game but would only recommend on sale. I just wish there was creature combat or Zelda dungeons or something.

10/10 game, made me cry at the end

Beautiful game. The story was really touching, Vic is a lot like myself. I am a huge animal lover and the story really got to me throughout the game, especially the ending. It was so bittersweet and touched me so deeply I had tears in my eyes lol. A sequel to this would be amazing.

Adorable creatures, gorgeous scenery, and a story that makes you THINK. Not one to skip.

Nature softly heals Creatures trust a gentle hand Wonder blooms again