Endling: Extinction Is Forever game review, what you need to know
“We’re not on another planet. Because the issues we’re talking about are real, not something that we invented.”
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The world is on fire.
Red and yellow flames lick the sky and engulf the forest. Animals panic and flee. Trees collapse. Amongst the carnage, a fox streaks through the foliage, frantically trying to find safety. The smoke is suffocating as she begins to dig beneath a fallen tree, searching for a way out.
Later, as she attempts to navigate her way down a cliff, a moose races through the haze with its antlers on fire, startling the vixen who falls and injures herself. She manages to limp her way to a cave where she collapses, birthing four little cubs. All of them are woefully unprepared for what comes next.
The opening scenes from Endling: Extinction is Forever are confronting. They’re eerily reminiscent of the Black Summer fires of 2019–2020 – which tore through more than 24 million hectares of Australian bushland, killing an estimated one billion animals along the way. According to the new video game’s creators, Herobeat Studios, this dystopic yet familiar burnt landscape is entirely intentional.
The striking visual of the bright blaze contrasted by the game’s muted colour palette is designed to leave a lingering impression.
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“As we developed the game, we saw how the things that we were trying to depict were happening day after day everywhere in the world,” Javier Ramello, the co-founder of Spain’s Herobeat Studios, tells news.com.au.
“I remember creating this arson level where there is a wildfire and everything is burning. At the same time, on the news, you could see the Amazonian rainforest burning and, also, we had all those wildfires in Australia and in California.”
Endling may be another post-apocalyptic game, but it ditches the worn-out narratives of human society collapsing after nuclear winter or pandemic diseases to focus on something much closer to home – a dystopian future created by our failure to address the current climate crisis.
The premise of the game sees you play as the last mother fox on Earth as she tries to protect her pack of cubs in a merciless world, using the cover of night to sneak towards a (hopefully) safer place.
The scenery of this 3D side-scrolling world is depressingly familiar, albeit much harsher than the one we currently know.
“We wanted the world to be authentic,” Ramello says. “We wanted players to feel that this is happening on Earth, not in a sci-fi. We’re not on another planet. Because the issues we’re talking about are real, not something that we invented.”
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The use of a fox as the “endling” is another deliberate design choice.
Coined in the mid-1990s by Georgian physician Robert Webster, “endling” refers to the last known survivor of a species. And while some Australians may be familiar with the term thanks to Benjamin, the last recorded Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), and his tragic demise, it’s much harder to imagine a world where foxes — widely considered a pest — have had their numbers so severely decimated that only one remains.
But as Ramello explains, this is the point. The game seeks to, “create an awareness and tries to encourage people to take a minute after playing to reflect on what they have just experienced.”
After all, “In a world where even foxes are in danger, imagine how the plight for the rest of the animals and humans will be.”
Making a fox the “endling” at the centre of the story also served another purpose for the game.
Foxes are highly adaptive creatures and Ramello notes it was interesting to find an animal that could be both prey and predator. Such a creature allowed the studio to explore a range of different scenes and scenarios.
“We wanted the player to go through different levels and have each level represent an environmental issue”, Ramello says. “So we wanted to have part of the gameplay happening in the outskirts of a city, but also in forests where we could show, like, deforestation issues.”
Survival is at the forefront of the game as you constantly need to provide for your cubs, hunting down food and avoiding danger. A health meter at the bottom of the screen measures your cubs’ hunger level and, as it begins to drop, the sense of urgency increases.
Hunger, and other problems you encounter throughout the game, can result in the death of a cub. And these losses are permanent. Endling forces you to sit in the heartbreak of losing a cub for the remainder of the game.
“One of the pillars of the game was to try to create a bond between the mother fox, the cubs and this environment. We created the cutest foxes so players could feel instantly attached to the cubs and their Mum,” Ramello says.
“Then, if anything happens to the fox cubs, players will suffer from that. No matter if you are interested or not in the environmental topic, you will be worried about what’s happening to them and it’s very easy for you to understand that everything that’s happening to them is caused by human action.”
In a unique twist, losing one of your cubs will also alter the music of the game. As Ramello explains, to keep the game as realistic as possible, the studio refrained from using ‘typical’ video game tactics, such as granting the mother fox the ability to speak, read or pull levels.
This insistence on a true-to-life fox came with a range of challenges though, such as finding an appropriate way to convey emotions. The solution was to have each of the cubs represented by a musical instrument and, if one of the cubs is lost, so too is one of your instruments.
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Despite the emotional nature of the game, and the glaring consequences of human impact, Ramello insists he doesn’t want players to feel like humans are the villain of the story.
“This is a little controversial,” he says, “because we wanted to make it clear that humans are survivors, just as the mother fox is, and are just trying to survive in this world they created.”
This point becomes obvious as you explore the game’s varied settings and encounter those struggling to survive. But Herobeat balances the game’s environmental messaging with fun side-scrolling platforming and a combination of sneaking, pouncing and tracking too.
Ramello says it was important to develop a game that players will enjoy, regardless of whether they engage with the environmental themes it presents.
“I think there is an option for every player to get more involved or emotionally invested in the game or just go through it having fun playing. We felt it was important to give this option so players won’t feel like we’re trying to be moralising or making them change by force.”
“I think the message is stronger if we are just giving it as an optional thing that you can learn from the game.”
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Despite this, the timing of Endlings’ release couldn’t be more pertinent here in Australia, with the Federal Government releasing its long-awaited State of the Environment report.
In it, a grim picture is painted of Australia’s current climate, with the report declaring the environment is in poor condition which is further deteriorating as a result of habitat loss, pollution, resource extraction and climate change.
It serves as a serious wake up call and begs the question, what will happen if we continue along this path?
“At some point, if we keep destroying the world, we will all suffer the consequences, no matter what kind of life you have led,” Ramello says. “Maybe you have always been very worried about environmental issues and you have been an eco-friendly person, but the end will be the same for any of us.”
It’s a raw and honest view, and perhaps a little fatalistic, but Endling is also hopeful. When the apocalypse comes, when the sky turns black and the forest burns, we don’t give up — we persevere.
His advice for playing through Endling is just as relevant in the real world: “if you work through it in the best way possible, there is still something to hope for.”
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Endling: Extinction Is Forever is available now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One/Xbox X|S, PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows at major retailers such as Amazon Australia, Big W and eBay Australia.
It is also available for digital download on the Nintendo eShop and Xbox Live, with PlayStation Store and Steam set to release it soon.
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