Europa Review – Beautiful Boredom

If you’re anything like me, then your October is filled with dark, grim, and spooky games first and foremost. So a lighter game like the 3D platformer Europa from developer Novadust Entertainment and publisher Future Friends Games might just be perfect to take a little break from all of that. In theory at least. In practice, you should rather look elsewhere.

If you don’t know what Europa is, it’s that game that keeps showing up at indie game showcases that looks like a playable Ghibli movie. I mean, really, if there was ever a game that description applies to, it’s Europa. Painterly landscapes dominated by luscious green foliage and crystal blue lakes, along with the ruins of an old civilization. It’s a very pretty game; there’s no way around that, and the music accompanies the scenery perfectly too. Soft piano tunes and calm violins that invoke a stroll through the peaceful forest.

A truly stunning landscape

Europa is the kind of game that’s really just about exploring the world with not much else going on. There’s a few things to collect, though there isn’t really much of a reason to, and there are some enemies despite the fact you are unkillable (not that it matters since you practically have to stop moving for a couple seconds to ever get him by them anyway). I suppose there are also puzzles, but I almost struggle to call them that due to their sheer simplicity, you just need to press some buttons that are never hidden particularly well. There are also some platforming sections, most of which are made entirely redundant by the fact that you have a jetpack and can glide through the air. That might be for the best, though, considering how bad the jumping feels in Europa. Movement in Europa is clearly built around the idea of reaching a flowstate that allows you to seamlessly drift through the world, but in practice that’s just not what happens. In one part because of how clunky everything controls, in another because of how the game keeps stealing your momentum for the smallest things. So I guess what I’m saying is there are other things to do beyond just exploring; they’re just not well done.

And even the exploration isn’t exactly satisfying. Europa is divided into a bunch of smaller levels that have a very clear end you’re moving toward and not much beyond that. There isn’t even much of any environmental storytelling that might encourage you to look around a bit more, despite the fact that you’re supposed to be discovering these ruins of a fallen civilization. But the art direction, pretty as it is, is entirely too unspecific to give you anything beyond a general “there used to be a civilization here.” Instead, the storytelling is kept on the pages of a journal, read aloud whenever you find them (you basically can’t miss them). It’s a bit ironic how heavily the game relies on pretty straightforward exposition through voiceover when that same voiceover keeps telling you how important it is to learn through experience and not just by being told anything. Maybe the developers should’ve taken their own advice here.

Look! Dead robots

Now it’s not that the story doesn’t have any chance of being interesting. It’s about the moon Europa that has been terraformed into a paradise by humanity and awoken the gardeners, robotic creatures, to live alongside them. But of course humans are too xenophobic to ever live alongside another species in peace, and so they start a way, and then the old man keeps telling you how much better everything was if we could only get along. It’s exceptionally generic storytelling both in its delivery and content, with the most barebone substance about our relationship with and disregard for nature.

Europa is one of the bigger disappointments for me this year. It’s a game that’s nice to look at but a chore to play. Even at its very short runtime of around 3 hours, I got bored of the lack of mechanics and frustrated with the lackluster execution of them.

Nairon played Europa on PC with a review copy.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments