What number of colours do you actually need to depict a subterranean world of mansions, labs, speakeasies, sewers, and dungeons? Everdeep Aurora chooses to empty out all the colour you don’t want, till you’re left with a really putting artwork type that pulls you into its world and leaves behind whiplash whenever you exit it.
Shell the cat wakes up one wet night time on a bench, finds her mom lacking, acquires a drill from a frog, and decides to drill down to search out her mom. The floor is being hammered by meteors, and an apocalyptic temper has set in among the many residents. However the place is mom? Shell should meet folks of all types of persuasions who’ve taken refuge underground, and discover her options herself.
Evaluating video games to that previous warhorse Darkish Souls has turn out to be a rote train within the 12 months 2025, however I’ll do you a particular: Everdeep Aurora is a sport with no fight in any respect that borrows the obtuseness of Darkish Souls’ characters and storytelling. There’s no grand lore drops, no handholding in issues of context, and no actually no rationalization as to how characters get round with out drilling the underground into a big cavern.
That’s alright – we want rocks for Shell to dig in any case (the character, not the oil and fuel firm). Shell’s drill works on a mineral known as Duracite and needs to be recharged often at sure recharger stations peppered throughout the underground world.
It’s a wierd design – Shell has to wrestle to traverse anyplace, however even after her drill runs out of juice, she will be able to seemingly nonetheless use it to interrupt rocks simply advantageous. You can too have the frog Ribbert rescue you at any level again to the final camp, in case you’re caught.
Taken collectively, these design choices make the sport’s important problem – traversal – really feel superficial. You drill, drill, drill, and it’s all simply to get from one place to a different. The characters you meet communicate briefly, and also you’ll typically have objects to ship from one place to a different, keys that allow you to entry locked areas, however at no level in Everdeep Aurora did I really feel tethered to the world and story it was expressing.
I felt myself drifting via this world like tumbleweed, till at one level the sport ended and credit rolled. As I sit right here scripting this evaluation, I really feel like I’ve extra questions concerning the sport after enjoying it than earlier than. Briefly, Everdeep Aurora was 4-hour expertise that left me questioning “What the hell simply occurred?”
My tackle this sport should sound unfavorable, however I would like to put particular stress on the sport’s music. Very like the sport’s use of shade and sprite work, its music is luminous and well-defined, including to the environment and typically even defining it. I sit up for listening to the sport’s soundtrack post-release.
Everdeep Aurora is a sport that’s powerful to advocate, as a result of it doesn’t appear to be constructed for a selected form of participant a lot as it’s constructed for a sure temper. It is a sport you play at nighttime on a quiet, maybe wet night time, exploring a world of darkness and lightweight, assembly unusual however fascinating characters, and piecing collectively a world you don’t instantly perceive.
Developer: Nautilus Video games
Nation of Origin: Spain
Writer: Video games spirit
Launch Date: July 10, 2025 (PC, Swap)
The PC model of the sport was performed for this evaluation of Everdeep Aurora.
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