Europa review – Studio Ghibli in space --[Reported by Umva mag]

GameCentral reviews a charming new indie game whose luscious landscapes bring to mind Ico, Journey, and Shadow Of The Colossus.

There’s a set of video games that don’t share a genre so much as a sense of curiosity-infused exploration. Ico, Journey, RiME, and Shadow Of The Colossus are almost perfect archetypes of that brand of relaxed adventuring, but you could make an argument for Limbo, Abzû, or even The Witness, all of which have a very distinct atmosphere and nobody to explain it to you.

They have a few other things in common, like nebulous objectives, a lack of checkpoints or too many gamified collectibles, and a protagonist who doesn’t talk. The net effect is that you’re left to infer what’s going on from subtle environment cues or the writings and illustrations of long dead ancients, rather than someone sitting you down and telling you in a cut scene.

While Europa has an unfortunate habit of giving you brief instructions rather than letting you figure out its simple puzzles for yourself, in most other respects it’s a perfect example of one of these genre-less adventures. Set on one of Jupiter’s moons, that’s been terraformed by humans, you’re exploring it a long time after humanity’s departure – which leaves behind a mixture of gloriously idyllic landscapes and vast broken metal and stone leviathans, along with a scattering of inscrutable domed ruins and viaducts.

Smoothly narrated by an elderly man, whose scrawled diary pages you find dotted around, you play as Zee, a young android curious to learn about what happened, and his place in its history. As usual though, more important than the plot is the feeling of wandering discovery required to unlock its pages. Just getting around the place feels great and that’s half the point.

It’s fun because strapped to Zee’s back is the zephyr device, a kind of magical bottle that scoops up sparkly spheres of energy you find, releasing them as a kind of magical jetpack that lets you boost and glide through the scenery. While gliding, Zee automatically skis down hills and across bodies of water, making your exploration swifter and more elegant than walking.

Soon enough, the tranquillity is interrupted by ancient defence systems that take aim at you with energy beams and robotic gardeners that also like to take pot shots, although both can be disarmed very easily once you learn how. There are also what look like sea mines to avoid, some of which hang in the air, while others litter the ground.

Getting blasted doesn’t particularly disadvantage you other than a brief moment of dizziness, but the explosive interruptions to your otherwise peaceful exploration make you want to avoid them where you can. It turns out that the moon’s human population were both the cause and target of the ancient machines’ hostility, the history of which you’ll gradually discover as you travel.

Inspired by Studio Ghibli, and despite being noticeably low resolution, Europa manages to feel magical from start to finish, its painterly art style, beautiful music, and bucolic landscapes combining to mesmerising effect. It’s being released just before Sony’s PS5 Pro, a £700 incremental graphical upgrade, and this feels like an inadvertent monument to its futility.

Clocking in at around four hours, Europa is far from an epic and, like Journey, is best enjoyed in one or two sittings. That has the benefit of letting you get swept up in its lore and atmosphere, enjoying a bit of gentle escapism without any crafting or paid XP boosters to break the immersion.

Its puzzles, which mostly revolve around opening magic portals into the next area, are all straightforward, requiring a minimal amount of additional exploration to find the necessary orbs or manoeuvre the correct glowing cubes into place. They fit nicely with the sense of mellow adventure, free from the usual video game mores.

Each of the chapters has a slightly different feel to it, with landscapes giving way to subterranean caves and waterways, and eventually an aurora-lit twilight; the familiar pieces of level furniture and the energy that powers Zee’s zephyr device help maintain continuity as the game spins in still-functioning leviathans, translucent purple air jellyfish, and a range of other eye candy, much of which you can pause to sketch – adding to a growing record of Europa’s bestiary, both organic and synthetic.

It’s a delightful process, and for those willing to get carried away with its whimsy, a lovely way to spend a few hours. Nothing quite matches a first play through of Ico, but Europa at least captures some of that atmosphere of wonder as you experience its terraformed moon, centuries after the population has departed. Like the best of its diffuse genre, it’s a bittersweet joy.

Formats: Nintendo Switch (reviewed) and PC
Price: £13.49
Publisher: Novadust Entertainment
Developer: Future Friends Games
Release Date: 11th October 2024
Age Rating: 3

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