A quick look at Europa, a promising exploration game.
A little boy steps out into the world for the first time. The landscape is full of lush meadows, striking blue rivers, and wildlife gently pottering around. It holds such serenity that I almost feel commanded to stop and drink in every detail.
I played the Europa demo like this at first. I walked slowly along the trodden paths, retracing the same steps the creator of Zee, our android protagonist, took. As Zee’s creator narrated the words of his collectible journal pages, it turned out the beautiful world before me hid something darker.
An attempt to terraform Europa into a paradise for humans, and to leave behind Earth in its human-induced environmental destruction, was successful at first. But by the time Zee arrives on Europa, civilisation has fallen, leaving the world feeling empty. Its beauty turned haunting instead, and I was cautious of blasting through the demo for fear of missing out on an intended sadness I was meant to feel.
