It's a good game but it could have been much better,

The world is well designed. Lots of things to do but not too many collectibles which I liked. The art style is great.

The game is fun and relaxing. Combat is very barebones but it somehow works for they style of game. There's quite a variety of creatures to tame with various abilities.

The main gripe I have with this game is it's nonsensical story. It was good until the final twist which doesn;t work at all in my opinion.

6/10

Full Game: https://youtu.be/39aR6XF0fpk

So close to greatness. One of my favourite games is a melancholy number called Heaven's Vault. It's a game about a dying world, and what you do about that. Creatures of Ava follows a similar premise, but has a much blunter edge, swapping it for a soppiness that does melt my icy heart, but not completely.

+ Non destructive combat against animals just minding their business. Makes a change from just wiping animals from existence.
+ In line with Heaven's Vault, you come across as the dumbest person in a any given conversation, and it's so fun.
+ Game looks gorgeous, even on the lowest settings with balanced AI upscaling (but I found out this because of a negative, see later)
+ A world fun to explore, it's easy to get lost in the corner of the map trying to find all the collectables.

- Using animals to solve puzzles felt very clinical, but was mostly reserved for hidden collectables.
- End boss was very very easy, and through some earlier bug was a creature I had actually already beaten earlier in the game.
- A few bugs. it crashed at least once in 14hours playing. You have to be careful in a couple of areas otherwise you can't complete the animal encyclopedia you build up, there just aren't enough robots to 'save ' all the animals you need.
- Inventory system is crap. The game is 10 to 20 hours long, you don't need a complicated inventory or crafting system. Especially when crafting relies on 4 archetypes of plant, but one big quest requires you to have unique plants to deliver. Game would have need funner without it all, and probably 5 hours shorter.
- Game struggles to maintain 30fps on Steam Deck, regardless of settings, despite being 'Verified'. Even low on everything. That means it should be 'Playable' at best. It only happened in a few places, but still was disappointing. Otherwise, I discovered the game is still quite pretty on the lowest settings. But that's not the point.
- According to the plot, your actions for most of the game are pointless. Which is just a but crap, really. As I was doing a good job up until that point (90% of side missions complete by, 60% of the main story was fine).
- End cinematics would have been lovely if the unreal engine could play a movie without stuttering. Also the end credits seemed to repeat a bunch of names to the point it ran out of images to show.
It's a lovely, if predictable story, and it's fun to run around Ava and explore.

In short, it's a lovely little adventure, but don't expect anything profound despite the subject matter.