The ocean planet of GUP-14 is just not a cheerful place. Its seabed has been gunked up with piles of trash, globs of purple gunge and nasty clouds of micro-plastics, all as a result of an industrial megacorp could not be bothered to scrub up after themselves after bleeding it for assets. That megacorp’s since upped sticks to, sadly, proceed their horrible methods some other place within the photo voltaic system, however calling out these unhealthy practices (past them being clearly unhealthy and never good for the planet) is just not actually Loddlenaut’s concern right here.
Fairly, your job is to easily clear up this mess together with your array of high-tech gadgetry, therapeutic its polluted environments so: a) it is not a grim, purple hellscape anymore; b) native, axolotl-like loddle creatures can transfer again in and prosper. It is easy, satisfying work that is designed to make you’re feeling heat and fuzzy inside with out having to suppose too onerous. However its easy, frictionless story could go away some wishing it had just a bit extra chunk, and fewer of a way that you simply’re laying the bottom for another faceless corpo energy to go and splurge throughout it once more.
There may be, I admit, a definite risk that I am overthinking this, and projecting a few of my very own private woe concerning the state of our personal planet onto what’s in any other case a really cute, charming and well-presented online game. So earlier than I get too slowed down in existential distress, let’s speak about what Loddlenaut does finest: giving your mind a pleasant scorching bubble bathtub whilst you methodically zap-clean stuff together with your laser, scoop up its trash and convey it again to your base’s recycling bins, and create cute little songs together with your clear, smiling loddles by flashing your helmet lights at them and watching them chirrup again in response.
You begin small in Loddlenaut, tackling easy stains in a small, contained space and watching your efforts slowly remodel the water and temper from doomy indigos to a serene shade of turquoise. With every new space you go to, nevertheless, your cleansing canvas begins to develop in dimension and complexity, escalating at a satisfying tempo till you attain the manufacturing unit and headquarters the place all this unhealthy stuff originated from. Alongside the best way, you will must improve your swimsuit, toolset and unlock new devices to assist expunge these rising threats, which you do – fortunately – by upcycling the planet’s trash into newer, fancier tools.
Over the course of its 5 to 6 hour run-time, you steadily settle into a mild loop of cleansing and returning to your property base to recycle. The whole lot has a delightful sense of tactility to it as nicely, particularly for these enjoying with a rumble-enabled recreation pad. Your diver’s laser arm will thrum with exercise because it mechanically seeks out the closest blobs it could purge, for exmaple – offered you manoeuvre him shut sufficient to the offending spots, that’s – and watching its clouds of microplastics all zhoom into the gaping mouth of your vacuum can have physics-likers squealing with admiration. It is all the time clear what you are meant to be doing, too. Your surface-side operator pal will maintain you up to date in your progress, letting you recognize when it is protected for loddles to start out shifting again into every atmosphere, and whether or not you are accurately geared up to face the obstacles in entrance of you. He principally leaves you alone to get on together with your work, however it’s good to know he is there like a giant, catch-all security internet when you get occur to overlook what you want or the place you are heading.
It is all very ‘switch-off-brain-and-have-a-good-time’ form of fare, however the one factor you may’t ignore is your oxygen degree. Even early on, you may go a good previous clip on a single tank, however you have to to regulate it and maintain it topped up, both by returning to the oxygenated waters of your base, or plonking down a round gate you can also make out of your crafting bench. The latter are clearly far more environment friendly than continually going backwards and forwards to your base on a regular basis, and the excellent news is you are by no means brief on assets to make them both (or something, for that matter – there’s a lot trash on this ocean that the grind to get new tools is totally non-existent). Nonetheless, when you do occur to get carried away together with your cleansing and overlook to look on the meter within the nook of your display, your backpack will even begin beeping crimson when it will get to about 25%, supplying you with loads of time to go and kind your self out.
The loddles themselves want a bit of little bit of consideration once in a while, however aside from cleansing them so they do not immediately undo all of your onerous work, you may additionally feasibly ignore them for the remainder of the sport and be completely positive. They can not die, though they’re repeatedly ravenous and intensely unhappy whenever you ‘verify up’ on them, and actually, if they can not maintain themselves on the abundantly clear and fertile vegetation I’ve spruced up for them with out fixed supervision and hand-feeding, then perhaps it is their very own fault they bought gooped within the first place. Truthfully. They’re very cute, although, and the best way they comply with you round, boop seaside balls you make for them, and mirror the pings and pongs of your helmet headlights with little tunes of their very own making all assist endear them to you so you do not simply abandon them with a cold-hearted grumble. They’re very characterful, and returning to an space to see new species and evolutions of their preliminary blob kinds is all the time an enthralling, low-key delight.
And but.
As a lot as Loddlenaut desires to be a chill, cosy recreation that is all completely satisfied ideas and cute little critters, I additionally could not assist however really feel like my cleansing work was kind of all for nothing ultimately. Except for the truth that the company you are cleansing up after clearly is doing all this polluting some other place within the galaxy (primarily based on story snippets pieced collectively from misplaced worker badges which have additionally been discarded together with all their different junk on this place), the ocean itself will regularly drift in different items of wayward trash whenever you’re off cleansing elsewhere, steadily consuming away at your completion ranking on every of its 5 foremost areas. It would not matter how diligent you might be both inside the space itself, or in its connecting gullies and oceanic corridors. The trash will simply carry on coming, and the loddles will proceed to undergo for it.
Maybe this sense of inevitability is intentional and I am worrying over nothing. For instance, whenever you ultimately go away GUP-14, you are instructed that you have carried out what you may, and that the planet can heal by itself now. However I even have zero confidence in that assertion primarily based on simply how rapidly these areas appear to degrade after I’m not trying. I ought to stress: it is not like they will drop from an ideal 100% again right down to a 20% hazard zone within the house of quarter-hour or something. It is a a lot slower, extra gradual course of than that, and I by no means noticed any of my totally cleaned areas drop beneath 90% all through my playthrough. However even this quote minor degradation started to nibble away at me over time. The ranking may not be that low, however the accumulation of trash felt extra extreme within the gathering of it, and the deep, dire purples of their earlier doom state would return to make issues further gloomy. I might give every space a bit of spruce as I handed by it, however the gunk nonetheless got here, and the loddles nonetheless bought gooped – and when the loddles get gooped, the vegetation do, too, making these as soon as pristine atmosphere really feel much more of an eyesore.
It isn’t a pleasant feeling understanding that even your finest efforts will not ever be ok to eliminate these things for good, and when at one level my blasé pal on the radio merely responded with a, “Nicely, at the least all this unhealthy stuff means we get to have a job,” it was onerous to not sigh on the futility of all of it (and within the recreation, and so on). Maybe it is unfair to take Loddlenaut to process over this, however there is a disconnect between its happy-go-lucky cosiness and the truth that, no, this should not be okay, I need some chuffing justice for these creatures, goddamnit, and for the spineless lackeys at Guppi to be taken to process for endangering these patently lovable little blob fish and ruining a whole planet for the sake of company greed. Video games with such a robust environmental theme should not simply cease at ‘switch-off-brain-and-have-a-good-time’. Personally, I feel they need to demand extra of us, and to the builders’ credit score, they’re, the truth is, donating a portion of every particular person recreation sale for the following three years to UK charity Whale And Dolphin Conservation. That is unbelievable! Wonderful! You like to see it! However I do want it was additionally extra rigorous on this entrance within the recreation itself and fewer complacent in the best way it frames its narrative.
As I mentioned, I am nicely conscious there’s some private planet fretting beginning to creep in right here, so I’ll summarise my ideas thusly: Loddlenaut is a cute, cosy and charming journey in all of the methods you’d count on it to be. The method of powerwashing this idyllic ocean ground is chill and zen-like, and when you’re the sort to coo over lovable nuggets of animal, then its little loddles can be proper up your avenue. However it should by no means be something greater than that. It is not going to problem you within the slightest, and it in all probability will not make you’re feeling something significantly profound, both – and for some folks that can be completely positive. For me, GUP-14 felt like a touch happier place as soon as I might labored my magic there, however I want it had a bit extra grit in its personal convictions.
This evaluate was primarily based on a retail copy of the sport offered by publishers Secret Mode.
