Etherborn is an elegant leap in the gravity-puzzle genre an environmental puzzle platformer built on exploring and understanding gravity-shifting structures.
You are a voiceless being that has just been born into a world where a bodiless voice awaits your arrival. As your first thoughts emerge, you realise your journey has just begun.
You experience gravity perpendicular to the surface you are standing on, allowing for creative exploration possibilities in environments carefully crafted as navigation-based puzzles.
Travel through beautiful and exotic sceneries where each level is an organic puzzle that you need to explore, manipulate and shift your gravity on in order to decipher the way forward.
Steam User 16
It's a solid casual puzzler. I enjoyed it. These sort of games are for the people who don't have much time for gaming.
Pros:
Definitely the soundtrack. This game has some great and relaxing music.
Art style of game.
Nice storytelling
Cons:
Puzzles are too easy / Game+ even easier.
Game is too short - only 5 levels
Price is too high - this game should cost around 10€ max.
Personal score: 6/10
Gameplay time: 5 hours
Steam User 11
This is one of those 'more of an experience' than a game games. It has 5 levels, the first one is really short, more of a tutorial really then a level. The fourth level is more of a precision jumping level then a puzzle/art game but the rest is nice. I finished it in 2 hours and although I thought the music was grating I see a lot of people liked it... eh. But you can turn it down or off so it's alright.
It was okay, not amazing, and a tad over priced maybe, if you want an art experience game I recommend Abzu over this one, but it was okay.
Steam User 24
---{Gameplay}---
☐ Try not to get addicted
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Nothing special
☐ Ehh
☐ Bad
☐ Just dont
---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget reality
☐ Masterpiece
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Will do
☐ Bad
☐ Awful
☐ Paint.exe
---{Audio}---
☑Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☑ Everyone
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{Story}---
☐ Doesnt have (Not counting historical stuff)
☐ Something isnt nothing I guess
☑ Not greatly told
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ Will make you cry or smile a lot
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press a bunch of buttons
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Not so easy
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{Game Time}---
☑ Long enough for a cup of tea
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ Depends on you
☐ Endless
---{Price}---
☐ Just buy it
☐ Worth the price
☑ Wait for sale
☐ Maybe if you have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ Dont throw money into a rubbish bin
---{Bugs}---
☑ Never had any
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Few bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Ruining the game
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
Steam User 8
8.5.2020. Game #122
DO NOT BUY THIS AT FULL PRICE. WAIT FOR A SALE
I know this is mean way to start a review but if you are going to take anything with you from this review, take those two sentences. Now with that out of the way, let’s begin.
The human mind, its wasted potential and other nonsense
Etherborn is a game that tries to way too hard to be deep and meaningful. The second you start a new game you will be hit with confusing statements how the human mind and body are wasted potential and how humans could have done so much more with ourselves but how instead we settled on mediocrity and blah blah blah blah, I’m sick of it already. This game pretty much talks about the same thing that those hidden Gods that created the world talk about in Assassins Creed games
By that I mean, the criticize humanity and state how we are destined for so much more but how weak we really are and how we aren’t able to improve because of our artificial boundaries. Yeah, maybe that’s not exactly what Etherborn is trying to say but it’s pointless anyway. It will talk about the above mentioned things and try to make a story about it but in the end, it’s all just a bunch of words about nothing. I could have gone to a wiki and checked what the game is trying to tell me but I can’t be bothered because I really don’t care about the “story” of this game. So, let’s talk about better things.
A glowing being on a journey of self-discovery? No? A see-through being on a journey to complete puzzles! That’s better!
While I really couldn’t care much about the story, what this game has going for it are the puzzles. You play as a humanoid see-through being. Actually, you can’t really see through yourself but you can see your veins and arteries. This is unsettling to say the least but seeing how you will be looking at your character from far away, it’s not so distracting. The game consists of going through a few levels where you have to get to the end by solving gravity-shifting puzzles. You play the game from a third person view. Your character can’t do much except run and jump. Luckily you have the power to defy gravity to which I will get to later. Your job is to reach the end of a world tree by passing sections (levels).
The game is really relaxing
Etherborn doesn’t have ground-breaking graphics but it certainly isn’t ugly to look at. Each level consists of you climbing or navigating through giant sky blocks while the camera shifts in lots of directions, depending on where you stand. It mostly feels like you are navigating the ruins of an ancient giant civilization. Everything is huge, blocky and gives a strong feeling of being alone. You also have really relaxing music playing in the background. Combine this with puzzles that aren’t too challenging and you have got a Zen-like experience in Etherborn.
Who needs a portal gun when you’ve got smooth slopes?
Etherborn plays mostly like a puzzle game similar to portal
You will have a level where you will have to reach the end by using the level itself to your advantage. You will do this by collecting orb-like glowing items and placing them in various openings which will then raise platforms and open new paths. However, some of these orbs are hidden high up on walls, upside down, inside holes and other hard-to-reach places. This is where your special ability comes into place. Whenever you walk up or down a smooth slope, you are able to change your own gravity. For example, if there is a wall that shifts through a smooth slope in a 90 degrees angle, you will be able to just walk over the smooth slope and start walking upwards. If you find another one of these on top of that wall, you will shift to walking upside down. I should point out that you don’t change the level’s gravity but just your character’s, this means that if you are walking upside down, you will be able to fall UP to your death. That’s what the game is all about. You see something out of reach, you look for a slope or 3 and you eventually reach that place. It’s hard at first but once you get used to the idea of moving over smooth slopes, it will become second nature to you (kind of like using a portal gun).
The puzzles aren’t too challenging and I never had to use a walkthrough
While it may seem impossible at first, pretty soon you will see that these puzzles are just hard enough to make you think a little but not too much. You probably won’t need any help solving any of these and yet, they will still make you feel like a genius when you finally reach that exit. It’s one of those “AHA” moments in gaming.
Slopes are fun
While it really doesn’t sound fun on paper, I couldn’t put this game down. Once you figure out how much freedom you have to traverse each level in almost all directions, the game starts to get really fun. Whenever you come across a challenging section it all becomes a matter of figuring out how to shift yourself to a certain wall and just walk your way there.
Listen to the game and use a controller
While the entire game can be played using a keyboard, I highly recommend using a controller. Not because, the controls are weird with the keyboard but because you will have to do a lot of walking in this game and that will mean holding a keyboard keys for a long period of time. Honestly, it’s much more pleasant to just tilt an analog stick than to hold a button when it comes to walking.
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room
If you take a quick glance at my playtime of this game you will see that it’s just under 5 hours. That’s not a lot is it? What if I told you that in those 5 hours I was also able to get every single achievement? Now it sounds like the game is even shorter? Now, get ready for this: what if I told you that in those 5 hours I was able to complete the game twice .
“Short” is an understatement when it comes to this game’s length. Going through the game once took me about 3 hours and the “new game +” took me about an hour and a half. Now add to all that the game’s full price of 17 euros , and you’ve got yourself a big fat “NO, NOT BUYING THIS”.
…but I had so much fun with this game
Even with the incredibly short gameplay and the ridiculous price, I still have to say that I’ve had quite an enjoyable time with this game. It’s just a lot of fun. I even had fun in New Game +, which shouldn’t even be called that because it barely changes anything. If you like puzzles like Portal, you will probably like this game too. That’s why, I am recommending this game
BUT ONLY IF IT’S ON SALE .
Next game: Event
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Steam User 8
I needed less than 3 hours to finish the game without NG+.
Definitely recommended. Artwork, sound and music are very enjoyable.
The puzzle elements are fantastic. They were somewhat hard but not frustrating.
I also really liked the story.
The only two downsides are:
- it's rather short
- credits are not skippable and pretty long
Steam User 5
I chose this game through the Humble Choice subscription. I didn't know what to think. My verdict: this game is criminally underrated.
Yes, it has its problems. For one, the camera is a gigantic pain and sometimes gets in the way of the solution to a puzzle. Also, it can be difficult to precisely guide the character in more delicate platforming areas.
Now for the good: I love the visuals, which seem to be a point of contention for some people in the reviews. The style is new and refreshing, and the translucent main character is a good design for the kind of story this game is trying to tell. The story, although extremely vague, really picks up towards the end, where the monologue is accompanied by your movement through visually insane areas. The controls are intuitive and easy, and the gameplay is relatively simple, the main action you perform as this character is simply moving from place to place. Impressively, some puzzles are quite tricky and had me stumped for a good minute. The soundtrack is also unbelievable, one of the best I've heard personally.
Overall a fantastic experience, and although really short in the regular story, I feel as though I reached a satisfying ending.
Steam User 3
Has some good puzzles and atmosphere to the whole game. Love the art work and deep story! you can watch a full play though here