going deep down
synopsis
Aurora is a little child living in a pile-dwelling slum, witnessing how trash and pollution is taking over her community and the environment around it, transforming fastly into a disaster.
Resolved to discover what kind of environmental tragedy is occurring and what the reason behind it is, she will embark on an adventure where reality and her imagination collide, with the hope to find a solution to the problem.
A game with an important environmental message from a small Brazilian studio.
Technicalities
Worldbuilding
Graphics
Ok!
On the Steam profile of the game, the description says "beautiful graphics".
While I think the game indeed has interesting graphics, I don't think they're outstanding.
I like their soft feeling, the choice of a neutral/natural color palette, the impression of a poor but very calm and friendly community all this gives to the player.
I experienced a couple of glitches but nothing serious (off screen, in a re-run. They're not present in the playthrough video).
I'd have liked some expressions on Aurora's 3D model but since I don't know how or why the project has been created, I don't know either if it was something out of budget or skill to achieve.
Story
Ok!
I consider the story the blessing and the curse of this game.
The story itself is a simple yet very current one, with an important message regarding environment and pollution.
BUT
If the first part is quite straightforward, going slightly under the surface of the second one, is where in my opinion all becomes a little messier and unclear.
We see Aurora as an intelligent child living in what seems a poor, polluted community. So she decides to discover the source of all that pollution, following her little toy ship in a mix of reality and imagination.
It's all ok until she takes the rowboat and gets on the "evil side", where she will understand what it's creating the pollution.
Here I start to feel a bit of a rush in what happens in the story.
We see Aurora getting into the factory-like zone and reaching at the end the office of this devilish entrepreneur that smashes a button and causes Aurora to fall in a trapdoor.
Then she finds herself inside a big pipe with water, similar to a sewer one. She walks towards the light at the end of it and we see a lot of dead fishes transforming into light and her going in the blue light circles.
The End.
At this point I think I understand what this part means and what it represents but it's not clear if we must form an idea ourselves, if we must interpret what the end shows us or if it's quite literal.
Because, if I should be totally honest, the first impression was a bad ending, where Aurora is a victim of the cruelty of the big industry which doesn't care about people or environment but only grinding money.
Moreover, knowing that the studio is from Brazil, where speculation especially around the Amazon Forest is a real thing in the same way of native people and activists being killed for trying to defend it, in the same way of a high pollution in the big cities, it sounds even more plausible.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice story with an important message but for this very reason I'd have taken some more time to explain the end better!
Game Mechanics
Ok!
It's a short and simple exploration/story-driven game, so no complicated commands. Aurora can walk (on land and in water, no swimming), jump and push some objects.
There are light circles you must interact with to see Aurora's boat taking life and sail through the pillars of the slum, in a slightly forced pathway. These segments act as a sort of checkpoints you must go through to go on with the story.
There is little to no free exploration and the game is very straightforward, without real challenges.
Character(s)
Ok!
The only character we get to see is Aurora. No other people or creatures around.
Aurora is a little child, little enough still to be in the age of the simple playing alone with a toy boat and her imagination (something we should never lose!).
I like a lot that she seems to be brown-skinned, like a big part of Brazil's population, the developers' country.
Despite this we don't have any clue about Aurora, beyond what we can catch at first glance: she's a brown-skinned little girl, worried about her community and wants to know what's happening to it.
We don't know what she likes or dislikes, if she goes to school, if she's among the poor or not in her community, if someone near her suffers consequences due to pollution.
I'd have liked to know it but I'm aware that this game is free in the same way I don't know if it was a school project or something more professional, so as always I don't judge!
Duration
Ok!
I've completed it in about 20 minutes, so I would say that based on your pace it can take from 15 to 30 minutes on average to complete.
The game has no achievements to increase the duration. There are only 4, but they're just milestones for the story progression.
Anyway you don't miss out on anything. The game is a school project, a students' work, it's not intended to be perfect, long, extraordinarily original or perfectly constructed.
Setting(s)
Ok!
I liked the setting. It reflects what a future village would be like, if poverty and an environmental disaster collide and it does it in a realistic way.
A pile-dwelling community makes you immediately think of the raised water level or a land so polluted to not be able to live on it anymore or even big multinationals owning it and forbidding people to stay there (or to stay with paying amounts the average people don't have).
I'd have liked to see something more "destructive" or "cruel" in the factory area, more similar to a real-life industrial zone, but I understand they might have wanted to keep things simple and light-weighted.
Anyway there is a big, neat border between the poor but peaceful village and the dark, heavy atmosphere on the land, and this helps a lot in catching how the story goes on.
Soundtrack
Ok!
I find all the sounds and musics are very fitting and they helps to understand the phases of the adventure: the first part has a light, breezy melody, very childlike and perfect to communicate the fusion between reality and a child's imagination; the second part, instead, is very gloomy and dreadful, neatly marking the limit between the two parts.
Creatures
Ok!
There are no creatures here or other people in general. We will see only two: a "monster" we fight when Aurora is crossing the body of water (we don't know if it's a sea, the ocean or a lake. We can suppose some sort of salty water zone) and the infernal entrepreneur at the end.
I must admit that the monster gave me chills. Not because it was super scary but for something it's design, can't say exactly what. Maybe its shape, maybe its way of slithering on the water or its speed. Or, more probably, all the options!
I think it would have been nice to see even just one or two people around, even just in the far background, like people near their home doing nothing or a couple of animals, like seagulls scavenging among the floating trash.
So, since there aren't many other entities around, my vote is based only on those two!
Performances
Ok!
None - Black Screen
None - Crashes
Ok! - Frame Rate
None - Freezes
None - Glitches
None - Lag
None - Loading Problems
OVERALL COHERENCE
Ok!
In general it's a coherent story. Short, too short maybe, to have the right amount of material and situation to be able to judge more than this, but it's not necessarily an unforgivable fault.
Apart from a little constructive criticism you'll find the "Story" section, below, I can say that all the elements are well linked to one another.
in pills
Overall, Aurora is a nice project trying to convey an important message: we live in a dreadful threshold, where we must transform our disregard for the planet we all live on in efforts to save it.
Or, better, to save ourselves.
We are just one of the thousands of thousands species that populate it and if we were to disappear tomorrow, it would thrive anyway as it did in the past for every cataclysm occurred (and no, humanity disappearing is a cataclysm to us, not to the planet).
So, if we want to survive we must rethink humanity's impact on the environment.
And this is surely what Aurora - A child's journey is about. Its message is impactful and important, making it a nice game for the littlest ones but, in my personal opinion, for a more mature player it can appear a little rushed and unclear towards the end.