Game: CreaVures

Platform: PC, Mac

Publisher: Muse Games

Developer: Muse Games

ESRB: E

Genre: Fluorescent Platforming

Players: 1

What's Hot: Huggable lovable CreaVures, and vibrantly distinctive visuals…

What's Not: … that serve little purpose besides being distinctive, finicky controls, lack of motivation, and some kinks to be worked out

---

Review by: Brian Rowe

The fluorescent animals of CreaVures would be perfectly at home on a bookshelf, peering down from a collection of vinyl figures with plastic smiles. Names such as Bitey, Pokey, and Zappy lack any semblance of inspiration, but the little heroes are too adorable to dislike, especially when they start dancing and bantering in their indecipherable language. It's cute set to overdrive.

CreaVures is a puzzle-platformer with a unique aesthetic, as if the woodland environments were stripped from the glowing mushrooms and neon trees of a black light poster. The scenery is eye-catching, but fails to offer any significance beyond surface-level appeal. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Plenty of games adopt vacantly attractive styles to garner attention, but they had better have the gameplay to back them up.

CreaVures' story about supernatural darkness overwhelming the forest is so thin it barely exists – actually, that pretty well summarizes it – but it gets you beating stages and collecting orbs of light along the way. Never underestimate a gamer's drive to scour the world for collectibles, but equally, never underestimate the desire to be rewarded for such efforts. With no narrative drama, no quotas for light, no leaderboards, and no unlockables, CreaVures lacks the hooks that its competitors possess.

Navigating the treacherous world of pits, fallen trees, spikes, and corrupted animals requires a hefty amount of teamwork. Each of the five CreaVures has its own specialties and limitations. For example: Bitey the cat is agile and can dangle his tail for others to climb, while Zappy the salamander can shock enemies with electricity, although he is nearly useless when climbing vines. You always control and swap between two characters, meaning every obstacle must be surpassed twice. I kept thinking throughout my entire playthrough how much I desperately wanted co-op play.

There are exceptionally few brain-teasers in CreaVures, and most puzzles are easily solved by following the character-specific cues set out for you. The most difficult aspect is wrangling the CreaVures into position. The keyboard controls are generally tight, if not lifelessly mechanical, but there are a few maneuvers that refuse to work reliably. In contrast, USB-controllers feel sluggish and loose, which can be disastrous where precision counts. The controls are functional, but there is never a point when you stop thinking about them.

The CreaVures are so loveable and highly animated that they can be distracting, like a real estate agent pointing you to the pool while she covers a carpet stain. There are minor annoyances, such as picking your resolution every time you play, to more major concerns, including framerates dipping into single digits and losing entire stages of progress. An update, which coincidentally landed as I was writing, made the joystick noticeably more functional, but it also killed the music.

CreaVures garnered a considerable amount of attention with its distinctively colorful visuals, and for some people that may be enough to look beyond the game's failings. It is pretty. It also has excellent potential, but at the moment, it's eye-candy that requires too many concessions in gameplay to fully enjoy.

Brian Rowe is Sr. Editor at GameShark and also manages our YouTube Channel and Twitter and Facebook pages.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .