When you can't chop down trees or dig holes, but you can kill an animal and leave most of it behind, there's contradiction between the message and mechanics.Īlongside hunting, there's gathering, of which you'll do a great deal in Retreat to Enen. At the very least, every part of the animal should be used in some crafting component as a sign of respect that aligns with the game's motifs. What makes things more existentially complicated is that some animals provide only meat while others provide only pelts, and in a game with deeply rooted themes of sustainability, the more realistic and better option would have been that each animal drops multiple materials when brought down if a hunting system must be included.

Traps and nets are utterly useless, incapable of catching anything no matter how long they're left out or where they're placed (at least over 12 hours of play, in my experience). Hunting, in short, is a laborious process that can be literally hit or miss - the spear animation makes thrusts wobbly and inaccurate, and the lack of any hit indicators, visual or auditory, for arrows makes ranged attacks hollow and hard to trace. Wolves, bears, and snakes will attack you without provocation, though they are strangely less aware of your existence despite being apex predators and often get stuck on the environment.

To conceivably dissuade you from hunting entirely, rabbits and boars are master escape artists, with some capable of disappearing through the trees as soon as you see them, not when they see you deer and iguanas are likewise highly attuned to your presence at every turn. To kill and harvest these animals is a chore, too, and in ways, further decouples the idea of survival from the ideal of custodianship that battle at the game's core.

But there's a palpable disconnect between the life these environments could reasonably support at this point in Earth's rejuvenation and what they actually do support. Maybe the Earth isn't as far along the path of healing as suspected. Not filling the world with creatures is perhaps an attempt to build a firm sense of place through the most environmental of environmental storytelling. The odd turkey gobbles as it runs through the brush or snow, a lone deer meanders through the trees and undergrowth, a solitary fish swims in the waves above undulating kelp forests and poisonous anemones. While these places may be visually lush, they're oddly devoid of life on the scale expected from the lite narrative setup, adding an inescapable weight of emptiness to Retreat to Enen. To prove yourself as one of these caretakers, you're tasked with venturing into the wilds to survive and reflect upon your purpose before bringing your knowledge back to share with future generations.Īn obviously Biblical play on words, the land of Enen is one of striking landscapes spread across three distinct biomes: the sand-strewn subtropical island of Enen itself the dense, sylvan acreage of The Valley of the Giants and the snow-swept crags of the frigid Great North. Humans have learned to live in lockstep with the world, theoretically taking only what they must to endure while becoming custodians instead of parasites. Set more than 2,500 years in the future, Retreat to Enen portrays an Earth well on the path to healing. The issue is that outside of those bounds, Retreat to Enen struggles to be a mechanically compelling experience, stirring up unnecessary frustrations that act in direct opposition to its contemplative core. It's a unique mechanic not found in any other survival game, allowing Enen to accent the typical beats of the genre while calling attention to how we interact with our natural world and the digital ones we frequent. One avenue is self-reflective meditation, a core pillar in Retreat to Enen's gameplay loop, which at regular intervals charges you to pause and consider the world around you. With such a goal, some introspection is undoubtedly needed, leading to a pivotal mindset shift - one that rejects untenable consumption and embraces mindful sustainability. The world has seemingly bounced back, with the vestiges of humankind learning from its mistakes, focused on rediscovering the necessary symbiosis between it and nature. But this isn't your typical post-cataclysm shrouded in the dense cloak of war and famine (though that happened long ago). Potentially, we're already on the trajectory portrayed in the opening moments of Head West's Retreat to Enen, which explores a timeline where humanity's overconsumption and lack of prescience doomed society to an ignominious collapse.

Firefox 45.0 reviews