Creatures of Ava Review – A Planet of Loose Pieces

Creatures of Ava, published by 11bit Studios and developed by Inverge Studios, is a game of inspiration. I don’t just mean that the developers who made it were inspired to create its beautiful world, or that it is the kind of game that is inspiring, but literally that Creatures of Ava was formed, nearly entirely, by its inspirations.

This is not a bad thing. There is no such thing as originality, and in the current age of video games, I truly believe that many of the best games coming out now are those that take formulas crafted by older titles and merge them together, refining them in the process. In spite of common calls for “more original IPs”, I think our maturing medium, in general, could use a lot more folks revisiting the past. And I don’t just say that because I’d kill to see Shadow of Mordor’s “Nemesis System” show up in a more modern game.

Creatures of Ava, then, should be exactly what I’m craving. Outside of its design elements, which are quite unique, nearly every other piece of the game comes from somewhere else, like dozens of seeds planted in the planet Ava’s rich soil.

But, like most things on Ava, those seeds are withering. The transplant of ideas from their inspirations to this game suffocates the buds. They are strangled by the other inspirations and the limited resources that developers often find themselves dealing with. Like Ava, there is still quite a lot of beauty in this natural process that indie games often end up with: overambition mixed with compromised execution. But, ultimately, that isn’t enough to save it. Let’s examine what I mean.

Gameplay

The first and most obvious of the troubles begins early, though you might not realize it at first when playing. The gameplay of Creatures of Ava is fairly weak. Vic’s available actions are simple, and the way those actions allow her to interact with the world are limited, to say the least. Most of your interactions early on are limited to jumping; playing an Ocarina of Time Naam Flute to calm and control the titular creatures; and use your Poltergust 3000 Nafitar in order to absorb the “Withering” from hostile, infected creatures and environmental blocks.

Immediately, there is some potential here for good puzzles and solid encounters. You can essentially transform into the various lifeforms of Ava and have a super-powered magic wand that can cast spells, after all. Unfortunately, though, this potential is not followed through on. The “Puzzles”, if you can really call them that, are as simple as “take control of a creature and walk them to the glowing object, then press a button to open a path.” It is a shame because there is real potential for the creature mechanics and spells to be used interestingly, but it is what it is.

And then there’s the combat, which, honestly, is just a chore. Thankfully, a straightforward, short chore, but a chore nonetheless. You attach your Nafitar’s (magic wand) beam to a creature, try to corral any other creatures nearby to intersect and join the beam, dodge slow and predictable attacks, press some buttons to speed up the process, and then voilà! The creature is tamed cured of infection.

“But Graves!” You, strangely defensive fan of an unreleased game, say. “Surely, there is more than that! Can’t you use your ability to control features to have them fight for you? To add an extra layer of depth to the game?”

No, strangely defensive fan, you can’t. Because Creatures of Ava features “non-violent combat”, and that would be violent. What do you think this is, Palworld? Or [COPYRIGHT REDACTION]? No!

And, honestly, I can respect that. The game’s core themes are inherently environmentalist and pacifist, so it makes sense to not create an alien-animal combat arena. But it does beg the question… why even include combat? Why have the infected creatures be so hostile — hostile enough that you need to dodge-roll to avoid them — at all? Especially when there are some nods to veterinary science, where Vic does interact with injured creatures, that indicate there could’ve been more interesting, unique, and complex conflict mechanics more related to Vic’s core goal: to heal the creatures of Ava.

“But,” you say. “You still have those spells, right? Surely, those could add something to the combat or puzzles.”

Sure, the Nafitar does provide some utility. But, unfortunately, it only ever gets 4 spells over the course of the entire game, and they are simple. Wingardium Leviosa Ushun is the first (and most interesting), allowing you to lift very specific objects and most creatures, essentially stunning them while you cure them of infection. A later spell you get, Arresto Momentum Dhom, slows creatures along a beam, essentially stunning them while you cure them of infection. As a reminder, that’s half of the spells already.

It’s all very bare-bones. And the progression isn’t much better, with the “Skill Points” awarded at the end of each level going into a basic skill tree that slightly improves those spells (or the extremely minimal, cluttered crafting system, which is hardly even worth mentioning).

Other elements are also underutilized. There are only about 20 creatures in the game, which is a comfortable enough number, but makes the concept (not to mention title) feel underexplored. The abilities of those creatures are also just serviceable, with each one pulling from the same pile of 7 or 8 abilities in different combinations, each one being essentially a key to solve a different kind of puzzle.

I haven’t mentioned the most interesting system, though, and the one with the most missed potential: the camera. And, as someone whose favorite childhood game was Pokémon Snap, and who desperately wants more snapshot-style gameplay mechanics in games, I was so excited to get a camera. I was going to frame all the creatures of Ava perfectly and get them to do the coolest things in front of the best backgrounds and get all the points!

Well, I was getting ahead of myself. As it turns out, I just took a few pictures of each creature and some collectibles to check the box of “take a picture of This Creature!” Needless to say, that wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, and I’m left wondering — like with the combat system — why it was even included at all, aside from to have a gallery to scroll through during the end credits.

All that said, I can’t say the gameplay is bad in Creatures of Ava. It’s just… underwhelming. There are so many different elements, pulling from so many different places — Pokémon Snap, Breath of the Wild, the God of War reboot series, Luigi’s Mansion, Banjo-Kazoiee, Tchia, Palworld. But not a single one of those ideas coalesces into anything even approaching their inspirations, much less surpassing them.

That is, again, not to say that the borrowed mechanics are bad, nor that they are poorly implemented together. Just that they are the most minimal and least realized versions of those reused mechanics. And, when those inspirations do each of those older mechanics better, I’m just not sure why I’d play Creatures of Ava instead, which should be the goal with this kind of derivative work. Creatures of Ava would’ve been a lot better if it had borrowed fewer mechanics and really fleshed them out and syngerized them with each other more. Instead, what we have is a snapshot of good ideas, combined meekly.

Story

While I’m not the biggest fan of Creature of Ava’s gameplay, though, perhaps its story fares better. After all, the lead writer is Rhianna Pratchett, whose work on Mirror’s Edge, Tomb Raider, and the Overlord series is top-notch. While not everything she’s done has been genius (Surgeon Simulator, tragically, is not on my “greatest stories in gaming” list), and while her plots aren’t always the most compelling, she is a consistent, capable writer who really does know how to juggle themes and push character arcs.

In that light, then, the story in Creatures of Ava has all the traits you might expect: a poor plot, strong characters, and clear themes that are muddied by ludonarrative dissonance.

I should preface this all by saying that Creatures of Ava’s story is, like its gameplay, not bad. But, it’s also not good. And, more importantly, not cohesive with the rest of the art it fits within. Like most of Pratchett’s scripts, I get the feeling that Creatures of Ava would’ve been better served as a TV show or movie. But even as a TV show or movie, Creatures of Ava’s characters would feel underdeveloped and bland, and its stock themes and ideas would struggle to leave much impact. To say nothing of some of the most contrived worldbuilding I’ve seen in quite some time.

It is difficult to explain most of my other gripes without going into spoilers, though since the beginning of the game is actually the part that is the best crafted, introduces the best characters and relationships, and which provides the most compelling plot (simple as it is), I don’t really think I’ll be ruining much.

So, in other words, spoilers ahead. If you want to avoid those, just scroll straight to Art & Aesthetics:

The first of two major issues I have with Creatures of Ava’s story is that it establishes plot points right before they are paid off. For example: early on, we learn that Vic’s parents were killed in an explosive accident that happened aboard a space station, long before the events of the game. This left her with an intense feeling of guilt, as she blamed herself for locking the escape pods on the inside, preventing her parents from being able to get in with her.

You don’t learn about that sense of guilt, however, the first time you are shown the scene. Instead, it just seems like a tragedy: like the escape pod malfunctioned, out of anyone’s control, stranding her parents on the other side of it as the station exploded. The first time we hear from Vic that she feels guilty? After she learns that it wasn’t her fault, that the pods locked on the outside (see what I mean by contrived worldbuilding?), and that her parents actually chose to lock the pod from the outside to save Vic.

Let me repeat that: we learn that Vic feels guilty over her parent’s death only after she has resolved that guilt by discovering it wasn’t her fault.

But, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s see another example: shortly after the above scene, Vic finds herself exploring an old human facility that committed horrific acts against the native species, experimenting on them and putting them through torment. While she is exploring this facility, a new voice comes in from the radio: Dr. Kratevas.

Now, by this point, we do know that Dr. Kratevas is Vic’s boss, went to the planet before, and was one of the key figures in the aforementioned experimentation. In other words, we know that he is a villain. What’s weird about this, though, is that this new character — the game’s main villain — appears at about the 3/4 mark of the game, has a conversation with Vic over the course of a 10-minute dungeon, and then Vic chooses to disobey his orders and rebel against his authority.

Reminder: this is the first interaction the main character and the villain have had during the entire narrative. And, 10 minutes after it begins, it resolves: Vic tells her friend and coworker that they won’t do his dirty work anymore, refuses his order, and decides to make things right.

Without even getting into the baffling plotting choices that follow that, that sure seems compressed. Why wasn’t the main villain introduced at the beginning of the game? Well, because anything set up in Creatures of Ava is always paid off as quickly as possible, and the payoff for the villain happens 3/4 into the game. It’s utterly baffling writing.

The above scene also marks the point at which all the player’s progress in the game begins to come unraveled, and where the gameplay and story of Creatures of Ava take a radical departure from one another. Because, you see, as part of the above refusal of Dr. Kratevas’s orders, Vic now realizes he is using the creatures for more evil experiments and refuses to collect any more creatures for rescue.

A third reminder for this section: the game is called Creatures of Ava, and its main pitch is that you get to go around and collect all the titular creatures of Ava to rescue them. And, because that’s what the game is about, you still do engage in all the parts of rescuing creatures — from befriending them with a flute, to curing them of the Withering, to checking off all the other boxes related to their conservation aside from “save them.” All while your character has adamantly told the rest of the cast that she refuses to “rescue” any more creatures.

See what I mean by this working better as a TV show? Because as a game, having your main character refuse the main mechanic of the game, while still having to engage with those mechanics, is weird. And it feels weird. Thematically and narratively, it works. But mechanically? It doesn’t; nothing changes about how the game is played aside from not having one extra step anymore, and so it feels discordant. We’ve been told Vic has changed paths, but the path she changes to sure plays exactly like the old one.

And this is before the ending, in which Vic goes a step further: basically totally invalidating all her and the player’s progress over the last 15 to 20 hours. I won’t spoil it, especially because it is thematically interesting, but I will say that it doesn’t feel great to watch a cutscene in which you witness everything you worked for be undone while overdramatic music plays.

But, I will say that it reminds me of that one silly observation about Raiders of the Lost Ark, stating that the outcome of Raiders would’ve been the same as if Indy had never tried to stop the Nazis. In the same way, if Vic hadn’t ever gone to Ava, everything would’ve turned out the same. Except, unlike Raiders (whose story actually isn’t about stopping Nazis), the character development and themes that the “inevitable ending” evokes are not nearly as interesting, and not nearly as clever (relating back to that “set things up right before they are paid off” thing).

I want to back off a little bit now and acknowledge, again, that not everything about the story in Creatures of Ava is bad. It’s three principal characters: Ava, Tabitha, and Na’mar are simple but interesting, and have compelling moments between themselves. The themes of individual quests, often environmental and slightly saccharine in tone, fit perfectly in the cartoonish, pastel-filled world of Ava. The writing of the individual dialogue is fantastic, highlighting one of Rhianna Pratchett’s greatest strengths.

But all that isn’t really enough for me to overlook the glaring plot issues, pacing issues, worldbuilding issues, thematic issues, and ludic issues that present themselves time and time again over the course of the game. Moments stand out, and are heartwarming, but the whole package is defanged, aimless, and confused. I can look past individual writing imperfections. In fact, I believe that even the best-written stories ever have aspects that are subpar. But, when they comprise so much of the narrative, they are hard to look past…

Art & Aesthetics

Now, onto something I’m a lot more positive about, and which saves this game from the depths of mediocre-game hell: the art. Suffice to say, Art Director Carolina Ibáñez de Aldecoa and her team of artists deserve accolades for this one. Even when my motivation was wearing thin due to weak gameplay and story, my eyes stayed glued to the screen.

In other words: Ava, and all its creatures, are beautiful.

The world is filled with color and life, but it never falls into the trap of something like Dread Delusion, where poor management of colors leads to an eye-burning cacophony of color. Instead, regions are given coherent palettes, and then those palettes are made use of fully and creatively. There is enough familiar about Ava’s landscapes to find the world familiar and comfortable, with some vistas being reminiscent of beautiful sunsets seen in Earth’s most interesting locations. But then, through the mixture of exotic flaura, odd geography, ancient ruins, and alien architecture, that familiarity is pierced by striking pieces of originality that make even the most mundane valley pop.

Populate that with fascinating creature designs — ones that evoke the “Animal-Plus-Thing” and “Animal-plus-Animal” school of design that Pokémon likes so much — and what you are left with is a marvel of a world in Ava. A place that you truly want to explore, with creatures you truly do want to rescue.

It isn’t the first game to really stun with its landscapes and creatures, but it is one of the better ones. I certainly prefer it to the lazy, borderline-copyright-infringing method of something like Palworld.

Unfortunately, though, I can’t say the same about the game’s music. Music in Creatures of Ava is sparse, and much of it is diegetic, occurring when Vic brings out her Naam flute and begins playing it. Not only are the pieces composed for the flute very dull and uninspired, but they also evoke Ocarina of Time so closely that they force me to compare. And Saria’s Song, these pieces are not. Especially because you only ever hear them poorly played as you struggle to match notes, instead of ever hearing the songs in full as truly rendered pieces of music.

The other music that appears in the game is so unremarkable that, even less than a day after playing it, I can’t recall a single piece. That does mean that the standard ambient music that played during some cutscenes and in some locations wasn’t offensive, but it also means that it wasn’t great.

To cap this section off with another positive though, I would be remiss not to mention the introductory and conclusory cutscenes, which are rendered in a traditional 2D-animated art style, albeit with very minimal motion. Both of these are beautiful and, even for as beautifully as the game is rendered normally, does make me wish for more than 3 of these 2D-animated flashbacks.

Exploration

This section will be brief, and mostly informational, but I do want to make sure people who are considered Creatures of Ava go in with the correct expectations: Creatures of Ava is not an open world game. It borrows in equal measure from the newer God of War games, Metroidvanias, and Banjo-Kazooie (though I suspect the developers might pick different, comparable titles if asked about their inspirations).

Creatures of Ava is structured similarly to the newer God of War games in that the game is divided into bespoke regions, each of which having a decent amount of openness that players can choose to engage with. But, each area is discrete, and only the hub area is revisited more than once (and even then, briefly).

It is also similar to Metroidvanias in that the few powers that you do accrue, you can use in specific places in the hub area to unlock a few extra secrets, as well as to progress to the next major area after finishing with each. This Metroidvania idea doesn’t come up frequently, but is definitely present.

And finally, Creatures of Ava is similar to Banjo-Kazooie and a whole host of other similar titles because it is, in many ways, a “Collect-a-Thon”. You enter an area, have a set number of a few different collectibles to gather (alongside rescuing a requisite number of creatures), and have to explore and solve puzzles to gain those collectibles.

All in all, then, you are left with a game with disparate regions, each of which having a decent amount of exploration and openness without being excessive, and within those regions you use your powers and noggin to collect a variety of creatures and objects. I state this only so that people don’t go in expecting an open world, which one might naturally associate with this “creature collecting” genre post-Palworld (I know I did).

Glitches and Bugs

Lastly, let’s talk about my worst problem with Creatures of Ava: it is just plain unstable, and the aspect most impacted by this instability is the quests and collectibles. You know, the bits you spend the most time working toward.

Keep in mind that some of these may be patched with a Day 1 patch or future updates, but that there are a substantial enough number of issues that I doubt the game will ever be considered anything except “janky”. Now, without further ado, I encountered:

• Becoming soft-locked near the beginning of the game when a starting quest wasn’t given to me due to a cutscene breaking.
• Creatures becoming stuck in walls, unable to escape even if I was able to control them
• “Rescue Bots” returning to their original location, even after I cleared out all the creatures that they were sent out to capture, cluttering the map.
• Creatures that shouldn’t exist spawning in due to strange triggers.
• Geometry glitches that put me in a half dozen walls, unable to escape.
• Being unable to complete certain entries in my Avapedia because there were, simply, not enough creatures to do so, either because they never spawned, or were never placed.
• I was able to access the “Jungle” area via a single teleporter even after completing the area and being told I wouldn’t be allowed to return.
• A whole host of other strange, performance related issues, despite my computer being well above the game’s recommended specs.

And that’s just what I remember, and without including any of the general jank that permeated Creatures of Ava. I don’t want to spend too much time on this because anything can be patched, and I’m sure some of this will, but I do need to highlight it now: buyer beware: Creatures of Ava, at launch, is janky. You will encounter glitches. You will encounter bugs. Things will break. Completionists will writhe.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I can only truly recommend Creatures of Ava to people who are really excited by the creature-collecting genre and who really want to see how it handles a 3D-Platformer Collect-a-Thon. For most others, Creatures of Ava is just not the cozy, cute, heart-yanking game that the developers clearly tried so hard to make. Between dull and unoriginal gameplay (filled with the wasted potential of a dozen other, better games), a nonsensical story whose few highlights don’t make up for the baffling decisions made, and more bugs than I can count, Creatures of Ava really does struggle.

It avoids truly despairing marks solely on the back of its fantastic art direction and some genuinely good writing mixed in with the bad, and because even its weak points are “serviceable.” But, despite those positives, I just can’t see myself putting up with the game’s systems, narrative, and jankiness long enough to return to Ava any time soon.