Creatures of Ava

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.

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.

10/10 game, made me cry at the end

유저 한글 패치 Team WASD : https://www.synapseent.com/wasd/games/8

I wanted to love this game, but at the end I felt so disappointed. My first issue was the bugginess. Creature collector bots sometimes reappeared or displayed incorrect collection details after fast travel, even though the corresponding creatures were gone from the area and would not respawn. I also had a really irritating bug where in the Dunes, the second piece of every collapsed column acted like it had not been collapsed, and my character would fall right through. The second issue for me was how each area locked down after you were done there and did not reopen at the end of the game to finish collection achievements. Yes, I know I was warned before they were locked at each point, and yes, it sort of makes sense to the story. But I would argue that even story-wise, they could be kept open until the final part of the Dunes, and doing so before then is needlessly punishing to the player. There was one item I needed that appeared to be in the Grasslands area, but was actually in the Jungle, and I accidentally locked myself out of getting it very early in the game. I would have to restart so early to get all the achievements, and although I was tempted, I was so frustrated in the end that I will not be doing that. Also, who the hell designs an escape pod that locks from the outside? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of escape pods?

This is a fun creature collector, but it sure is quite repetitive. The sense of wonder and adventure is there, discovering the alien planet has a certain charm to it, especially with the slightly janky flute minigame. It does add some weight and progression to the narrative. I like the color choice and the interconnected level design that thankfully minimized the backtracking. Even so, you'll be visiting the same locations often and it did get a bit boring. The dialogue is probably not for me, it's quite cringe and overly safe, and it goes out of its way to make everyone you interact with very unserious. I skipped most it. While I enjoyed the exploration, when reaching a new area, it just felt tiring.

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.