Find Out What It Will Take to Save the ‘Creatures of Ava’ in an All-New Story & Gameplay Trailer

Warsaw, Poland - June 6th, 2024 — What does it mean to preserve something? While our human inclination is to protect the weak and aid the vulnerable, will players dare to let go in the face of adversity when the struggle becomes too much? These dilemmas and more are explored in Creatures of Ava, the upcoming ‘creature saver’ title from 11 bit studios, co-developed by Spanish studios Inverge and Chibig aiming to shake up the creature collector genre.

Starting on June 10th, the first day of the upcoming Steam Next Fest, players can get their first true glimpse of Creatures of Ava, an action-adventure game focused on saving, not collecting, creatures. The story unfolds on the planet Ava, where our heroine Vic and her companion Tabitha have crash-landed. The vibrant biomes of Ava are teeming with life and colors, but the planet faces a grave threat. An infection known as the 'withering' is spreading, threatening to wipe out all life forms. It's up to you to understand and stop this process.

Creatures of Ava is set to release on Xbox Series X|S and Windows 11 PC in 2024. The game will be available on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for consoles upon release.

Creatures of Ava on Steam | Epic Games Store | GOG | Xbox

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About 11 bit studios

A collective of talented developers and skillful publishers reaching millions of hardcore gamers all driven by the creation of meaningful entertainment. We’re seeking experienced dev teams to form publishing partnerships with – teams with which we share an artistic sensibility, and the desire to create thought-provoking games while maintaining a smart business approach to the process.

About Chibig

Chibig makes cozy and cute games for everyone, combining farming and relaxing adventures settled in fantastical worlds full of wonder. Chibig doesn’t develop only games, we are creating a universe, and you will have to take care of it. We started our journey in 2016. At first with small mobile games which were the spark of this universe.

After the humble success of these games, the universe was expanded with the release of Deiland: Pocket Planet and Summer in Mara. More charming and compelling tales are about to be discovered in upcoming projects.

About Inverge Studios

We met in college. After finishing our studies, we decided to join forces so we could continue doing what we were passionate about, and what we excelled at: developing videogames. And we called it Inverge Studios.

Until today we have developed and published awesome games on PC, consoles and mobile. We like to create highly polished games with entertaining mechanics.

Now that we are consolidated in the industry, we are developing our most ambitious title to date.

Article by: Susan N.

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Effie - Switch Review

Effie by developer Inverge Studios and publisher Klabater Games—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Sometimes all you need in this crazy and oftentimes stressful world is the time to sit back and relax to something that makes you think of better days. Taking me back to what felt like simpler days, Effie by Inverge Studios felt like an adventure throwback to the days of the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64 where everything just fell into place without having to wrack your brain on where to go next.

Staring an old man named Galand, you'll be sitting down in front of the hearth to the story that he's telling to the titular Effie. Going back in time to a tale of bravery and danger, Galand was apparently neither and rather lazy in the beginning which caused the reason for this epic tale. Having denied helping out a woman looking for help, it turns out that she was a powerful witch and curses this young and strong strapping lad to become an old man as he had been wasting his youth anyways. Making things even tougher is that after being cursed, the Witch spreads dark magic throughout the land and if Galand wants his youth back, he’ll have to free the cities now under the blanket of this dark magic.

Rather simplistic in its approach, Effie is a classically designed action adventure that never tries to overcomplicate itself which was nice as it only takes a few hours to complete. Armed with a basic, heavy and a couple of special attacks, Galand is ready to tackle the various enemy types that will get in his way as he sets out to free the land of the Witch’s magic. With how short of an adventure that Effie is, I appreciated that the combat was never overly complicated and that while there are a few different enemy types, it’s never “too much” that unbalances the ratio of adventure to combat.

The adventure itself is pretty straight forward. As Galand you can either speed around the "overworld" or you can head straight from "dungeon" to "dungeon" if hunting for collectives isn't your thing. In either case, defeating enemies and opening treasure chests will reward you with experience points to level Galand up and make him more powerful for the battles to come. More hit points and a bit more attack power are always nice but as the move sets are already predefined, there's not much else to it

What I found interesting were the boss fights. They are all, and I mean all, against the Witch but the format switches up each time with a new set of challenges. This I enjoyed as it was a mix of platforming and combat but unfortunately what didn't work is that it all revolved, like the adventure itself, around the law of three. Do things three times, one hit to the Witch. Rinse. Repeat. The core concept was neat but I felt the pacing could have been spiced up a bit even if this is an old schooled tribute.

If there's one aspect that really didn't really work on the Nintendo Switch it would be in the graphics and the performance. Having watched the trailers everything was clean and crisp looking yet the first thing that I noticed getting into the start screen was that the graphics were jagged and almost missing a texture layer. It's not enough to break anything from a gameplay perspective but from a visual one, it made it hard to play for long sessions as it caused a fair amount of eye strain as it wasn't smooth to look at. Following that, at times everything would simply stall on screen if you moved too fast from one location to the other or almost crash in boss fights when too many elements were being loaded up. This later one caused a death or two as there was no way to avoid falling into lava or getting squished as you literally couldn’t see it coming.

Summary

Overall while short, Effie is a cute little throwback adventure that’s easy enough to pass through in an afternoon. With some fun puzzles, easy combat and interesting boss fights, I just hope that the Switch version is patched to offer the same smooth experience that was showcased in the opening trailers.

Score: 6 / 10

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