The ocean planet of GUP-14 isn’t a contented 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 elsewhere within the photo voltaic system, however calling out these dangerous practices (past them being clearly dangerous and never good for the planet) isn’t actually Loddlenaut’s concern right here.
Quite, your job is to easily clear up this mess along 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 are feeling heat and fuzzy inside with out having to assume too onerous. However its simple, frictionless story could go away some wishing it had just a bit extra chew, and fewer of a way that you just’re laying the bottom for another faceless corpo energy to go and splurge throughout it once more.
There may be, I admit, a definite chance 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 discuss what Loddlenaut does finest: giving your mind a pleasant scorching bubble bathtub whilst you methodically zap-clean stuff along with your laser, scoop up its trash and convey it again to your base’s recycling bins, and create cute little songs along 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 facility and headquarters the place all this dangerous stuff originated from. Alongside the way in which, you may have to improve your go well with, 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 progressively settle into a mild loop of cleansing and returning to your private home base to recycle. All the things has a satisfying sense of tactility to it as properly, particularly for these taking part in with a rumble-enabled sport pad. Your diver’s laser arm will thrum with exercise because it mechanically seeks out the closest blobs it might probably purge, for exmaple – supplied 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 hold you up to date in your progress, letting you understand when it is protected for loddles to start out shifting again into every surroundings, and whether or not you are appropriately geared up to face the obstacles in entrance of you. He principally leaves you alone to get on along with your work, however it’s good to know he is there like an enormous, catch-all security web when you get occur to neglect what you want or the place you are heading.
It is all very ‘switch-off-brain-and-have-a-good-time’ sort of fare, however the one factor you may’t ignore is your oxygen degree. Even early on, you may go a good outdated clip on a single tank, however you’ll need to keep watch over it and hold it topped up, both by returning to the oxygenated waters of your base, or plonking down a round gate you may make out of your crafting bench. The latter are clearly far more environment friendly than continuously going forwards and backwards to your base on a regular basis, and the excellent news is you are by no means quick 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 along with your cleansing and neglect to look on the meter within the nook of your display, your backpack can 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 little bit of consideration from time to time, however other than cleansing them so they do not immediately undo all of your onerous work, you possibly can additionally feasibly ignore them for the remainder of the sport and be completely advantageous. They cannot die, regardless that they’re recurrently ravenous and intensely unhappy once you ‘test 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 possibly it is their very own fault they received gooped within the first place. Actually. They’re very cute, although, and the way in which they comply with you round, boop seashore 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 varieties is all the time a captivating, low-key delight.
And but.
As a lot as Loddlenaut needs to be a chill, cosy sport that is all completely satisfied ideas and cute little critters, I additionally could not assist however really feel like my cleansing work was type of all for nothing in the long run. Except for the truth that the company you are cleansing up after clearly is doing all this polluting elsewhere within the galaxy (based mostly 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 once you’re off cleansing elsewhere, progressively consuming away at your completion ranking on every of its 5 principal areas. It would not matter how diligent you’re 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, once you ultimately go away GUP-14, you are advised that you have finished what you may, and that the planet can heal by itself now. However I even have zero confidence in that assertion based mostly on simply how rapidly these areas appear to degrade after I’m not trying. I ought to stress: it is not like they’re going to drop from an ideal 100% again all the way down to a 20% hazard zone within the area 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 under 90% all through my playthrough. However even this quote minor degradation started to nibble away at me over time. The ranking won’t be that low, however the accumulation of trash felt extra extreme within the accumulating of it, and the deep, dire purples of their earlier doom state would return to make issues additional gloomy. I would give every space a bit spruce as I handed by means of it, however the gunk nonetheless got here, and the loddles nonetheless received gooped – and when the loddles get gooped, the vegetation do, too, making these as soon as pristine surroundings really feel much more of an eyesore.
It is not a pleasant feeling realizing that even your finest efforts will not ever be adequate to do away with these items for good, and when at one level my blasé pal on the radio merely responded with a, “Properly, a minimum of all this dangerous stuff means we get to have a job,” it was onerous to not sigh on the futility of all of it (and within the sport, and many others). 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 would like 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 complete planet for the sake of company greed. Video games with such a powerful environmental theme should not simply cease at ‘switch-off-brain-and-have-a-good-time’. Personally, I believe they need to demand extra of us, and to the builders’ credit score, they’re, actually, donating a portion of every particular person sport sale for the subsequent 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 sport itself and fewer complacent in the way in which it frames its narrative.
As I stated, I am properly 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 anticipate it to be. The method of powerwashing this idyllic ocean flooring is chill and zen-like, and when you’re the sort to coo over lovable nuggets of animal, then its little loddles shall be proper up your road. However it’s going to 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 are feeling something significantly profound, both – and for some folks that shall be completely advantageous. For me, GUP-14 felt like a slightly happier place as soon as I would labored my magic there, however I want it had a bit extra grit in its personal convictions.
This evaluate was based mostly on a retail copy of the sport supplied by publishers Secret Mode.
