I thought Creatures of Ava looked really interesting from what I saw of the trailer and screenshots so when I saw that it was on Gamepass, I decided to check it out. The introduction has a pretty cool animated sequence that introduces us to the main character, Vic whose ship crash lands on the planet Ava. She was headed there anyway to extract animals from the planet to a bioark to save them and study them. I'm going to be honest; that part gave me pause because it felt a lot like a "savior" interfering with indigenous people and insisting their way is the only way and not really listening to the people who actually live there. It was not a good feeling. I kept an open mind hoping the game's story would evolve from that.
When Vic lands on Ava, this gives you a tutorial on how the mechanics of the game work with movement, jumping, and my personal favorite taking photos of the creatures for Vic's codex. It's easy to follow and you can adjust the game's difficulty. There are also some good accessibility options, but I do feel they could have had a little more. One of the things I enjoyed is that there is no actual combat in the game. You don't have to hurt animals or people to get the tasks done. The whole point is Vic is there for conservation of the creatures and learning about the planet. The creatures themselves are really cute and the fact that you can hug every single one is incredible.
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| Just hugging a cute alien horse. |
Vic has special tools to do this of course via a staff and a flute from the tribe that lives there, the Naam. The staff helps with purifying the animals from black thorns that cover them and can make them aggressive. Once they're cleansed, they're back to normal and just vibing. Vic can play a tune that links with them causing the animals to follow her and of course Vic can pet them and hug them. This also makes it easier for Vic to send them to the bioark. I did like this aspect of the game because it was fun to see all the different types of creatures and taking photos of them unlocked information about each of them for the codex.
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| Playing a song for a creature. |
Vic can also get the creatures to help her with things like clearing out brambles so she can go down a different path. There are a few puzzles here and there that involve getting the creatures to help. They're not terribly difficult and there are lots of notes to be found adding more information about the planet. My issue is with the way Vic was written especially her attitude towards the Naam. A lot of things Vic says towards them really frustrated me because it was giving colonizer attitude. She is absolutely stubborn and not listening to what they want or actually hearing them when they explain they're suspicious of humans because the humans that came before Vic did a lot of damage and broke their trust. It was a shock for me considering that Vic is a black character and yet the way she's written is for me problematic because again colonization. I was curious so I looked it up and I was surprised to see that Rhianna Pratchett cowrote the story for Creatures of Ava. I'm really hoping she didn't write this aspect of it because when I checked out the rest of the team, there isn't a single black person on the team at all. For me that explains a lot about how Vic was written. It's as if they did the bare minimum and then patted themselves on the back for it. It makes me wonder if they consulted with any black writers at all because the way Vic comes across is as if a white person wrote a black character with zero input or actually educating themselves and called it good. That's incredibly disappointing because Creatures of Ava has a lot of good things in it and the different biomes are quite beautiful. If only they hadn't reduced Vic to this one note ignorant thing.
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| This area was beautiful. |
I enjoyed the side quests a lot because it gave Vic more interaction with the Naam and gradually over time showed that she was changing her mind about how she saw things and that she actually wanted to learn about them and make things right. I just wish it hadn't taken the majority of the game's story for her to get there, but perhaps that was the point. Sometimes it takes a person a long time to acknowledge that they may not know everything and that their world view isn't necessarily the only way; that there are a lot of different ways to look at something and it's important to communicate with each other and work together to reach a solution or multiple solutions and coexist.
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| Vic makes a new friend. |
The story itself is not bad. I did like aspects of it such as the importance of learning from each other and being mindful about our impact over the environment and creatures. I appreciated how unique each of the four biomes in the game were as well. The variety of the creatures also stood out and I was always delighted to pet and hug each one. The ending of the story did make me emotional because of the way it talked about loss and grieving. That part was done in a thoughtful and mindful manner which hit all the right emotional notes. While I didn't love Creatures of Ava, I did like it and appreciated what it brought to the table with a different approach to action games and while the storytelling wasn't perfect, there were elements that added to the importance of the idea of connection and communication. Overall, I did enjoy the journey.
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| Taking in the view. |
*Creatures of Ava is available to play on the following platforms: Steam, Xbox Series X and S
