Endling - Extinction Is Forever

Being a parent can be rough, especially in the animal kingdom. Endling – Extinction is Forever spotlights this and amplifies it against the backdrop of a global ecological disaster. As the mother of the last generation of foxes on the planet, it's not only your family's survival at stake, but the survival of your entire species. The game's story is both beautiful and bleak, heartwarming and heartbreaking. As you move though the remnants of the world with your cubs, watching them grow and learn, adapting to the environment they were born into, you can't help but get emotionally invested in their safety. That's what makes it all the more intense when things go wrong. Getting caught and killed by the crazed furrier, for example, sends a chill down your spine as the realization hits of the fate that presumably awaits your cubs. This bond is mirrored by other relationships you discover in the game, as well as the duality of innocence and hope in contrast to guilt and despair.

As intense as the story in Endling is, the gameplay is anything but. The commands are simple to understand and laid out in a way that's comfortable, without ever getting in the way of the onscreen activity. Unfortunately, the game still finds a way to stumble over itself. It's played like a 2D side-scroller, but there's a 3D element to it as well. This layered design makes it easy to completely miss branching paths. And in a game where time is essential, having to double back and try to figure out where you are or where you're meant to go can be fatal. Also, some of the onscreen elements, such as action prompts or small creatures, seem to have missed the memo about jumping to mobile devices. They're often hard to see. You sort of have to take a leap of faith when lunging at smaller prey. These are small problems, both figuratively and literally, that don't ruin the rest of the experience, but they do add an unnecessary level of frustration.