Searching Without Shooting
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #191. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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Wide but shallow.
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I have a type, locked in from the start, stuck on the X and the Y. Many three-dimensional games have earned my admiration, but it’s the 2D run and gun that always captures more of my patience than most other formats. We continually drift towards the familiar, the first imprints of heavy brain electricity.
For example, I haven’t seen the original animated version of The Lion King since the ’90s, but I had that Elton John soundtrack cut into my deep storage, such that I caught a whiff in a post of some kind or another and for an eternal moment I was reeling in a pre-teen emotional wash.
That same well wrapped me in the tube-glow of the Metroids and the Vanias and everything in between. Shoot, jump, get fancy with some wall moves, close-quarters and at range, riffs backing it all up. So when the era of 360 degrees and a fetish for realistic representation wrapped up, and developers of all sizes went back to searching and actioning (whether for nostalgia or scope or a blend of the two), I was primed.
Which is to say, I’m an easy mark. I’ve burned through the large and the small, though timeliness isn’t always my prerogative, in search of action. And I’ve found that not many games go all in on search and forego the action. The very notion sounds like a disconnected whole, a puzzle missing a piece. But Everdeep Aurora doubles down on search and dares to be a small game full of little freaks hiding from the falling sky with no direct violence as a solution to your problems.
It’s also pixelated and sticks to a two-tone palette at any given moment, though those colors often switch around depending on where you’re ambling. You of course are an adorable cat looking for her mother by drilling through as many layers as possible. The cute blank faces of so many other games are inverted into your black cat bumbling around making friends large and larger in a world that thrums with light and curious spaces you’re regularly upgrading to get around.
It’s all search, where getting around is key. Your little cat Shell drills around and you have to be a little cognizant of your path as gravity still applies and getting up can be tricky. These paths are regularly wiped out as you get further along and areas are reset, but so it goes. There’s no quest or mission log so it’s up to you to remember who you spoke with and what they may have wanted, this along with environmental puzzles and honing in on your cat parkour is what Everdeep Aurora is all about.
This is not a long game but it’s still pretty full. I loved kinda just flompin’ around and seeing what I saw, though this wasn’t a particularly useful method of play for someone who is only able to check in once in a while. Coming back after some time doesn’t leave you much to work with but that’s OK by me, many of my faves from those salad days were unfinished rentals that spun out into the infinity of imagination. There’s challenge but not exactly difficulty here, a game that many might find too “easy” who I would argue are playing the wrong title.
If anything, it’s refreshing to see such a well-painted attempt at something beyond a martial solution to all one’s problems. “Metroidvania” remains a broken catch-all term inherently limiting the game-maker’s imagination. To do more with less, without sacrificing style or substance, to allow creativity to grow because of specific limitations, that’s the root of the experiences I’m still chasing, and Everdeep Aurora is a bold step on the path.
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Levi Rubeck is a critic and poet currently living in the Boston area. Check his links at levirubeck.com.
