In one Indie World Showcase Last December, Nintendo bookmarked Endling: Extinction is Forever, and I was immediately intrigued by the premise. It is sadly trying to tackle deforestation and climate change.
Endling begins with a look of horror at the destruction of nature at the hands of man. You control one of the last foxes on Earth, and you must escape a forest – perhaps your home – that is ravaged by a fire. As soon as you find a new lair, it turns out you have a cub to take care of. Doing so requires you to feed and nurture them as they grow while avoiding the dangers of a world that is no longer safe for you.
Durable nails are the concept that survives on the skin of your teeth. At best, I can feed my cubs and teach them new skills to survive when I’m not around. Worst of all, I’ve had one go missing from my flock while others were injured by natural predators like owls and people-hunters after my feathers. Even when things are going great, knowing the world is on fire and I’m the last of my kind still feels miserable. When situations go from great to worse, it becomes heartbreaking. If you have a soft prop for lovable animals like me, Endling will most likely suffer. It’s no shame that its visual style, which features wide color strokes and minimalist design, is beautiful, especially in the way it plays with the foreground and background.
Although its premise is a resounding success, its gameplay still leaves much to be desired. Herobeat Studios describes Endling as a 3D stealth/side-scrolling game and rightly so, but it’s not particularly good in either genre.
There’s not much to do in the immediate future. You can use the fox’s snout to track scents, which often lead to food for your cubs, and you can pounce on unsuspecting prey by prowling critters like rats and rabbits, but that’s it. That’s the thing (or at least, that’s all I did. actually done in this preview). Sure, the cubs’ new skills like jumping, climbing, and crawling through small gaps change everything, but in the end, they lead to new food sources.
There are more stealth-oriented parts, like when you come across the trapper who killed one of your kids. But these encounters just wait until they no longer point the flashlight at you before moving on. Once the trappers were discovered, they remained in the same place for days, meaning that every night I was out hunting, I would have to go through the same sneaky part that played out the same way every time. This quickly became uninteresting, but unfortunately I needed to keep exploring the area.
However, I have a feeling that my current problems with Endling’s gameplay are because I only have access to its opening hours. My cubs learned new skills as I played during the opening hours, and I hope the abilities I haven’t unlocked will knock out the gameplay rather than “this is a new way to find food” . Plus, despite the gameplay shortcomings, I was intrigued by Endling’s exploration. Every night, I get to explore more places in the world, fueled by my discoveries. This led to finding new objects to smell, giving me clues to the whereabouts of my missing uncle. It also opens previously locked routes.
Endling isn’t quite a Metroid-like experience, and it doesn’t necessarily get there. However, I enjoyed how each night of exploration ended with a better understanding of my surroundings and more revealing of the map. However, I hope the full game has more locations to explore, because, after two hours, I’m ready for something new. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long to find out because Endling: Extinction is Forever is launching for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC on July 19.
