Creatures of Ava Review: A Beautiful, Doomed Journey Of The Familiar & The New

Summary Creatures of Ava merges story and gameplay seamlessly for an immersive journey through a stunning world.

The game features non-violent combat, satisfying puzzles, and unique creature control.

Despite pacing and control issues, Creatures of Ava offers a charming experience with moving story elements.

Creatures of Ava is a familiar kind of creature-collecting game with a more than a few unique twists. It's the second development effort by Inverge Studios, the developer behind the action platformer Effie, but with the bonus addition of 11 bit Studios (Frostpunk, The Thaumaturge, Indika) behind it. But Creatures of Ava is entirely different from anything else in either studio's repertoire. In fact, despite wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Creatuers of Ava is unlike any other game in recent memory.

Creatures of Ava stars Victoria "Vic" Hamilton, an environmental scientist working for an intergalactic corporation. Her mission: to save the dying planet Ava from a little-understood, rapidly spreading infection called "the withering," by evacuating as much of its flora and fauna as possible before it consumes them all. And that's just what the player spends most of their time doing: solving simple, yet elegant puzzles by charming and controlling animals, and eventually zapping them into space. It all amounts to a very ambitious game that balances innovation with familiarity, even while it suffers from issues with pacing and polish.

Creatures of Ava 4.0 Pros Innovative takes on survival and creature collecting mechanics

Preserves familiar but welcome genre staples

Excellent world design Cons Needs more polish; small bugs and hiccups abound

Pacing is uneven and can lead to a bit of a lull here and there

An Immersive Journey Across An Alien World

Creatures Of Ava's Story & Gameplay Brilliantly Converge

Close

Creatures of Ava is primarily a story-focused game, but its gameplay meshes perfectly with its plot to create an immersive, moving tale. After landing on Ava, Vic discovers a sort of magic wand, the Nafitar, that she uses in a form of non-violent combat to cure enraged creatures and clear pockets of infection. She can then charm them by playing the flute, recruiting their help in solving puzzles before leading them to designated evacuation sites and beaming them up. But there's more to this effort than it seems, and a terrible truth soon emerges.

Related Indika Review: "As Awkward As It Is Sublime" Indika is a wholly original, grimly surreal, confrontationally dark adventure game, as awkward as it is sublime.

It's ultimately a subversion of a colonialist narrative: the technologically-advanced humans believe they're the only hope for Ava, but are eventually foiled by the Naam's innate understanding of the life cycle. Its story isn't the most groundbreaking, and its final twist is pretty predictable. But it's solid, and interesting enough to follow, mainly by virtue of its excellent characters.

It's the Naam, a race of owl-like, sapient creatures populating Ava's villages, who carry the bulk of the story on their backs. Their attitude toward the encroaching humans ranges from academic curiosity to cold annoyance to pure indifference. Most importantly, though, each Naam is a remarkable character, who makes their part of the journey memorable. Their stories are mostly told through a series of simple side quests in which Vic helps them resolve their conflicts and come to a better understanding of her mission. That makes parting with them much more difficult, and puts the "bitter" in the game's bittersweet ending.

This is only aided by Ava's immaculate atmosphere. Everything is bathed in heavily-saturated strokes of blue, green, purple, and pink. The creatures are downright adorable, so sneaking up and photographing them for bonus research points is a delight. It's all scored by a beautiful soundtrack of semi-diagetic music - Vic's flute melodies blend seamlessly with the background music to make for a haunting soundtrack.

Related The Thaumaturge Review: "Distinguishes Itself From The Pack" The Thaumaturge is a boldly inventive fantasy CRPG with a unique historical setting, but it's troubled by script and gameplay issues from the start.

Where it falters, however, is in pacing. While puzzle solving and creature collecting never get old, much of the story is relegated to frankly unnecessary fetch quests. Players will spend far too much time running across the map in search of one thing or another, and these errands are rarely impactful, interesting, or rewarding. As a result, the story sometimes takes a backseat to exploration, which is unfortunate considering how much the characters have to offer.

A New Twist On Non-Violent Combat & Puzzles

Creatures Of Ava Heals Instead Of Hurting

But despite the questionable morality of evacuating Ava's population, collecting creatures, which could easily feel like a chore in a lesser game, is incredibly fun and satisfying. That's mainly because players aren't roaming the wilds, hoping for random encounters with their desired species: all the creatures of Ava roam specific, predetermined areas, and can easily be found on the map. Players often have to solve puzzles in order to access evacuation sites, using creatures' unique abilities to break down barriers or forge new paths.

The puzzles are all pretty accessible, although they do get noticeably harder throughout the game. But even the simplest of them are satisfying to solve,. It's always exciting to control a new creature for the first time, experimenting with their new abilities and discovering their personalities. That excitement is occasionally frustrated by a wonky hitbox or a sluggish movement ability, but the end result is that each creature feels fresh and distinct to control.

In the best way possible, Creatures of Ava evokes classic Zelda, making discovery itself a joy regardless of the rewards.

Vic gets new powers of her own as she explores ancient ruins, opening up paths to progress. Each time a major story event occurs, the player discovers a new area of the map that feels like an entirely different world from the last, where they must track a unique set of creatures and use their new powers to traverse distinct obstacles. But they can also return to locations they've already visited, and find new secrets within them. In the best way possible, Creatures of Ava evokes classic Zelda, making discovery itself a joy regardless of the rewards.

The combat itself is simple, yet effective: it involves shooting beams of blue light out of the Nafitar at infected creatures. Vic can chain targets together in order to heal multiple creatures at once, but taking a hit or dodging can interrupt the beam. This creates a fascinating, geometric game of crowd control and positioning, in which players must corral infected creatures, then carefully observe their movements while popping off magic powers to boost their healing and increase their defense.

For all its cuteness, it can actually be pretty hard, especially when contending with behemoth monsters near endgame. That's not a bad thing, though; the occasional bouts of difficulty prevent Creatures of Ava from being just another cozy game, devoid of all conflict. It challenges the player, both physically and philosophically, requiring them to think about the wisdom of their actions both in and out of combat.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

4/5 - "Excellent" By Screen Rant's Review Metric

Most of all, though, Creatures of Ava is thoroughly charming. Veteran fans of Nintendo games will find a lot to love in its Pokémon Snap-inspired photography challenges, and its Wind Waker-inspired musical puzzles. It may suffer from minor flaws in pacing and controls, but these only rarely distract from actual enjoyment of the gameplay, the world, and its characters.

Players old and new will inevitably find themselves immersed in Vic's journey and Ava's fate, somewhere between its unique creature designs, evocative soundtrack, and moving story. As a whole, Creatures of Ava is a wonderful experience, and is likely to stick with players for a long time to come.