Review: CreaVures (Steam)

Austin February 28, 2011 News, Reviews, Video Games, Video Games

About a week ago, I received a Steam announcements for a new puzzle-platformer, CreaVures, from Muse Games (you might know them for Guns of Icarus). As soon as I saw the first moments of the trailer, I knew I was going to buy this game! Imagine my surprise, when I received an email the next day, offering me a chance to review it! Sweeeeeeet!

I’m pretty excited to talk about it, but I need a minute to collect my thoughts coherently. So, how about you watch the trailer for yourself, and when you come back, we can discuss what’s been witnessed.

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This, takes me back to back in the day (I am old enough, at 30, to say that, I think), when puzzle games were extremely popular. I have always liked thinking games, and platformers offer a challenge. Sure, you can THINK of the solution, but, CAN you pull it off ? I was easily absorbed into games like Heart of Darkness, Out of this World, and Flashback, with their almost Prince of Persia style of evolved puzzle platforming gameplay, and amazing motion capture graphics. Or Lost Vikings, Asterix and Obelix, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, with their co-operative character-based puzzleplay. CreaVures reminds me of so many games, in so many ways – all of them good!

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"Bitey" can clamp his jaws onto things, allowing others to swing across gaps.

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The game centers around some rather ethereal beings known as “Creavures”. Something has been killing their magical forest, and only they can collect and restore the light. Each Creavure, and there are five in total, has a unique ability, allowing it access to areas the others cannot reach, or that allow them to help the others complete tasks, and collect “essence”. Players have to think ahead, controlling one creavure at a time, swapping amongst them constantly, since they won’t leave each other behind. Working together, moving as a group, sometimes you have little room for error.

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"Pokey" can climb walls, leaving spines for the others to utilize.

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CreaVures will grab at you and pull you in. The entire time I have been playing this game, I kept meaning to type down notes, but I was so engrossed in the gameplay that I completely forgot that I was even “working”. The music is really soothing, and it truly adds to the almost crystalline depth of the environment. I could play this game for hours, and in fact I did! It’s engaging, and wonderfully complex, yet simple and beautifully designed.

The creavures look like some kind of Tron/Avatar offspring, with their raver style UV body tagging, but the graphics create an honest mood, making me feel as if I were actually traversing some hidden realm, deep in the unknown reaches of the rain forest. Turning the lights off, and pushing the volume up a bit, really adds to this effect. Immersing you in a world you won’t want to leave.

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My name might be hokey, but I look kick-ass! Praise be to Eywa!!

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The game kept me glued, and I am planning on completing the game fully, something that is rare for me. Not many games keep my interest through to completion, so I welcome a title that makes it easy for me to want to keep playing. Environmental immersion is a factor many games neglect, or they focus so hard on it, that every other aspect suffers. CreaVures has a world that keeps you involved, yet requires you to be prepared for the next step. Challenges are everywhere, sometimes requiring specific abilities to be used in a certain order, or you might find someone stuck where they can’t help you, and you will miss out on the all important essence.

Spanning 15 beautifully constructed levels, with five different forest areas and two bosses, the game may seem short to some, but there is quite a lot of depth to each stage.

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I feel like I may be over doing it a tad, but I really would be hard pressed to find something I didn’t like about this game. The only issues I had were minor things, like the hit detection and jumping. The game seems to have contact points with graphics layed over, so a charging enemy might have an image slightly larger than that contact point. If you don’t hit the contact point, you didn’t hit it, and risk being hit, or killed. This also sometimes applies to jumping, where the edge of a platform might let you fall through if you are not dead on it. This is an issue a lot of side scrollers have, so not a big deal.

These things just require a bit of consideration, and you will adjust your playing to compensate, so I am not really complaining. If you are honestly bothered that much by it, you are being too picky!

This game is practically perfect, and for $10, it is quite a fair deal, i I do say so myself. Also, f you want to save a bit, the game is 10% off until March 2.

<Why is there so much UV Lighting in the rain forest?>

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