Review: Everdeep Aurora (Nintendo Switch)

In Everdeep Aurora, you play as a little kitten, Shell, in search of her mother. With a 2D platforming mechanic, the game focuses mostly on exploring underground dungeons, mansions, and much more. Solve puzzles, talk to fellow animals, and dig, dig, dig!

You start at the surface where Ribbert, a friendly frog, helps guide you towards your next steps; giving you a drill and sending you below. Underneath the surface is a lot of stone, dirt, and materials. Using your drill, you can dig your way around, finding said materials and talking to locals in the hopes of finding your mother. At first, your drill is slow and takes a couple of hits before breaking blocks in your path. But there is a blacksmith who, with enough resources, will upgrade your drill for you.

The more you drill, the more power you lose. However, you can replenish it with gems you get from digging. Also, if at any point you find yourself running out of power, you can always call Ribbert for help and he will take you to the nearest campfire. This goes for if you find yourself lost, as well.

This is all Everdeep Aurora really asks of you, mechanically. Aside from moving around, of course, which includes walking, jumping, and wall climbing. However, gameplay doesn’t just stop at digging. It’s important for Shell to talk to those around her to progress the game. There are also multiple endings you can get, depending on how many characters you help.

For example, earlier in the game a woman asks you for some flowers. While this isn’t directly related to finding your mom, finding the flowers and helping this woman out not only grants you access to better tools, it also helps more creatures around you. Another example would be helping a rat get a specific stone, which in turn grants you an upgrade to your radar map.

The art style and music for this game are incredible as well, with a color palette that changes depending on where you are.

The animations are great, the animals are cute, the scenes are fun to look at, and, overall, its vibe is insanely fun. Even Shell’s meow is the cutest thing ever. It makes the game even more interesting and hard to put down, as all of its properties are incredibly charming.

The only troubles I had with Everdeep Aurora would be the game’s save system and map layout. As far as I could tell, the game really only saves when you tell it to. At first, I didn’t see this as a big deal, but then I found myself stuck in a dungeon, not lost, but unable to jump up to where I needed to go. After a while of trying, I eventually had to quit the game and start over, losing much of my progress along the way since there were no autosaves. Then, when trying to retrace my steps and collect the items I once had, I found that I had no idea where I was, or where anything else was, even with the map, which is just a bunch of pixels that showcases white dots for blocks, and black dots for open spaces, and a red dot for your character. If you don’t remember where certain things are, the map won’t really help you find them, at least early on in the game.

On top of that, not much overall direction is provided. If you’re looking to fully complete the game, that can make that a little challenging. However, if you’re playing just to find Shell’s mom and call it a day, Everdeep Aurora provides a fun, explorative, and stress-free adventure that I can definitely recommend.