Seed of Life is an enjoyable, yet decent adventure game as you take on the character of Cora on the dying planet of Lumia, which has been overtaken by an alien invasion. Cora must journey through the realms of this planet in hopes to activate the Seed of Life and restore the planet. While the description says that the light conquers the darkness, I have mixed feelings about this game. On the one hand, it definitely meant this game is for those that want to relax and wind down. The gorgeous environment visuals and peaceful, yet ambient nature of the landscape of Lumia definitely provide this. This game suffers from generic-level designs that should have been more innovative. The game’s story keeps to a simple K.I.S.S formula and that works wonders for introducing the world and showing how this world is illustrated by the backdrop of an alien invasion. The story, however, did not achieve the deep potential connection that it was striving to go for, as I did not feel enough of an emotional connection to Cora in the first half, but during the latter half of the story, I did. This game is definitely more family-friendly, and I think they created the story in a way that it did not become ambitious, and it did not reflect the extreme potential it had in making Cora stand out as a character, as she should have.
[h1] Story and Gameplay [/h1]
The story of the gameplay of Seed of Life is quite simple, and it does a good job of introducing Cora to this world. As Cora, you leave your house and navigate through a myriad of complex canyons and volcanic lands to enter the Seed of Life. Once you pass through these levels, you collect Lumium, which helps with energy. You also have to go to Pedestals to make sure that you recharge your health and Lumium and collect petals. This I felt was the strongest aspect of gameplay because it is giving you directions on how you survive in this world. Another powerful aspect of the game is that when Cora reaches areas, you can feel earthquakes, wood dropping to the deep caves of this world. These moments definitely make the world alive, but it doesn’t add enough immersion. There are no murals, no illustrations written in the caves depicting the fall. Even if Lumia fell to the alien invasion, there would have been survivors that wrote or depicted the event. I think there would have been enough space within the budget to add small touches like this here and there.
Once you do this, you can unlock abilities from the Pedestals that will help you in regeneration, increasing your Luium supply, and allow you to recharge often. One of the best parts is the sprinting ability, which I absolutely love, but hate when you have to cross bridges because the minute you fall is when you have to respawn once again when crossing a level. This, I felt, was the strongest aspect of gameplay. One thing that disappointed me about this game was collecting petals. To collect Petals, they are your life force in a way to unlock new abilities once you reach a pedestal and solve a puzzle thereby unlocking that new ability. You must navigate crooks, nannies, and whatnot to collect a petal by going to a purple gate and pressing E. This then activates the shield guarding it to disperse.
This sort of focal chokepoints sure adds mystery, but they don’t add enough sense of adventure for me in the game. I didn’t like how you had to climb certain areas when I would have just wanted to climb everywhere, to be honest. Cora doesn’t run quickly enough. I believe that with a bigger budget, the story should and could have been more. I should have had Cora narrating her personal moments to me when she enters parts of a canyon, maybe some more forgotten ruins here and there. For a world that is medieval, from what I saw, I would have wanted to see more medieval ruins dotted around the map here and there. What I felt Seed of Life was essentially a game that was the foundation. Introduce the world, and make the world as simplistic as possible, which is a good thing. The game lacked combat in pretty much most of my gameplay, and in fact, solving the puzzles is an enjoyable challenge. But they are not as good as they should be.
As I went from checkpoint to checkpoint, pedestal to pedestal, I came upon these puzzles to solve. Outstanding, you might say. What disappointed me the most was how easy they were to solve. I wanted more mystery. Yes, you talk to a robot named Nar that explains why they destroyed Lumia, but that it was inevitable, yet not a choice of their own choosing. This was quite a weak moment for me, as I would want either free content updates or DLC to expand the story and a better explanation of why the invasion actually occurred. I think the game followed the K.I.S.S formula a little too much. To get to further elements of the story, the Robot advisor Nar does a good job of motivating your character. To unlock further secrets of the story, you need to gain around 2000 Lumium, where you go to these other checkpoints or landmarks in order to deplete your points and listen. I didn’t think this element added much fun to the gameplay.
Seed of Life is a game that promises adventure, and where it delivers on the adventure aspect are the environments and the tasks that you need to do to survive. Where it doesn’t fulfill this aspect is by not having challenging puzzles to solve, by having very basic level designs for crossing bridges or going from one end to the other, and it doesn’t have many medieval ruins nor does the story introduce some nuanced, deeper gameplay mechanics that could also be simplified in a way. Seed of Life is begging for more content.
[h1] Conclusion [/h1]
Seed of Life is a fun, family-friendly game that has decent voice acting, a story that follows the K.I.S.S formula to a great degree, but at the expense of sacrificing deeper lore for more basic gameplay level design and gorgeous environment visuals. However, good visuals cannot disguise the weaknesses of Seed of Life’s major story. For a game like Seed of Life, it needs a strong story, and the story in this game is serviceable, but not deep enough that it got me emotional at the end because it feels like the setup for new content to be added, some DLC or maybe a Seed of Life 2. It lacks much in the innovation department for solving puzzles because the puzzles could have been better designed. It should have motivated me more than often. Yet I often fell from bridges many times, and it made me so frustrated that I almost didn’t like it. Seed of Life should be more engaging with its lore, allowing us to get immersed in the world. It does this at the beginning, but the game then becomes this: Explore the fantastic environment of this world, gain a lot of Luiumn to discover secrets, but not enough content is there yet to immerse the player. However, this game is definitely worth trying out because it is a game that is relaxing and the lack of combat in this game is a prominent feature. I want more puzzles, more content, and more story updates. I believe this will make the game better.
You can find the full review here at Sassy Gamers.com: https://sassygamers.com/seed-of-life-an-interesting-adventure-game-that-needs-more-content/
You can also find my review on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuZpH3ksrJ4
