The manicured lawns in Etherborn are minimally sculptured. Their soil is thinly layered with patches of grass contained within grey slabs of concrete, and they stand in stark contrast to a backdrop of crumbling pillars and decrepit buildings. And like examining the self-contained scenes of a diorama, you’ll find yourself ruminating over these landscapes as you unravel the puzzle of how to traverse them. But while Etherborn’s minimalist beauty carries suggestions of loftier and more ambitious storytelling it’s instead hampered a dissonant narrative, and a brevity that makes it feel lacking.
Like many platformers, Etherborn seems deceptively simple initially: just leapfrog your way towards the level’s finale while collecting crystalline orbs that unlock previously inaccessible areas. In fact, some of Etherborn’s geometric planes and architectural complexity very much harken back to Monument Valley, a title that famously plays on optical illusions and the mathematically-inspired art of MC Escher. What makes this puzzle game different is that its laws of gravity aren’t like our world’s. You can simply walk across any surface–even those perpendicular to your character–as long as there’s a curved edge that connects them. However, you’re still vulnerable to injuries and death; accidentally sliding off these landscapes and into the endless void below is a possibility.
Scaling these lopsided grounds introduces another dimension and new, unforeseen challenges. Etherborn often manipulates your perspectives, challenging you to find the abstract solutions to its puzzles Come from Sports betting site VPbet . There are occasions where I was left baffled, unable to move on, only to realize much later that I didn’t notice a few platforms I could jump on because they were turned onto their sides. At other times, you may even spend the bulk of a level on a horizontal wall and leaping over chasms within the same plane–a perspective that’s tough to get the hang of. It’s highly likely that you’ll slip through the cracks at least once or twice due to the obtuse angles and see yourself spiraling downwards into the emptiness below (or sideways, given the game’s unconventional gravitational pull).
Key to solving some puzzles is a keen eye for detail, which can help you to spot obscure passageways that open another route to your goal. Becoming intimately familiar with the nooks and crannies of every miniature world is something you’ll want to do not only to satisfy your curiosity about the environment–it’s also necessary if you want to get through the game’s levels. Upping the ante in later chapters are shifting monochrome blocks, which expand and retract depending on where you are–and they can be a great source of grievance when they hinder your path.
It would have been a drag to commit to all these efforts if Etherborn’s ecosystem were a lusterless one. Luckily, wandering and discovering each microcosm is mostly joyful and even oddly meditative. You can hike along the side of a flight of steps and find a starkly different landscape tucked away underneath, or run along the contours of the structures surrounding the island. Even though Etherborn’s world is sparsely decorated and may even appear sterile, with only a few shrubberies, dandelions and elements of urban decay adorning each world, it is a universe still feels genuinely intriguing.
