Developer: Alpha Wave Entertainment
Publisher: AAD Productions
Platforms: PC - with and without VR
Tested on: PC
Euclidean – Review
When we hear the word ‘euclidean’, our minds travel back to Mathematical divisions and geometry. For a lot of people, that’s enough nightmare fuel as it is. But what if it could be even more terrifying? What if you could fall into a world of geometric horror, timeless depths you were never meant to reach nor ever meant to escape? Would you allow it to devour you? Welcome… to the realm that is Euclidean.
Story
Imagine standing on top of a mountaintop reaching well above the clouds. A mysterious massive super-moon is hovering over a peak in the distance while relics of an ancient temple rest behind you. The location might be pretty chilly, but it’s the perfect place to study this near magical night sky. You gaze up at the wondrous celestial body and for a moment it feels as if the moon itself is gazing back at you. Suddenly big purple bubbles grow out of the now threatening satellite and come straight after you. Darkness engulfs you, the air itself gets too thick to breathe and before you know it, you lose consciousness. When you come by, however, you’re falling into a dark and horrifying unknown where everything you touch can mean your untimely death and a sinister entity (or possibly several, even) is keeping watch. While a grim voice keeps taunting you, you can only wonder… What are you falling towards?
Graphics
Euclidean starts off with a lovely and near magical looking scene before diving into a realm in which strange creatures live amongst the rubble of a lost world. The various 3D levels you traverse in first person are beautifully crafted. The combination of real life inanimate objects with geometric shapes that move around as if they are breathing the air you cannot, draws players into a strange sense of tense calm. Unfortunately, you can’t see that much as you move down through the very murky depths. Only flashes of light, created by the doorways that bring you to the next level, illuminate this world just enough for you to see its wonders and dangers. When looking down, you can see your body glowing as if it’s made up of pure energy. Every zone you move through is accompanied by its own specific soft yet clear colour, casually evoking certain feelings. The yellow stage for example, gives an impression of emergency and alarm while the red stage floods the subconscious with ideas of imminent danger. In short, the whole experience is like floating deeper into a weird, watery lucid dream or giving yourself over to the mysteries of a big art installation.
Text is minimal in this game, yet still appears quite frequently. Supertitles allow the player to easily understand the voice, while a more stylised writing taunts the player when being killed by a passing creature. What adds to the mystery of the universe however, are the signs that appear amongst the jaggy titles when entering a level or moving over the various objects at the start screen. They really look like an amazing alphabet and we feel the characters should have gotten a bigger role.
Sound
Euclidean relies heavily on atmosphere. The voice following you in your descent through hell and into madness, is heavy, dark and distorted. The constant sound of bubbles moving through water is accompanied by your heartbeat and the crackling of dangers lurking in the dark. The additional ambient audio helps further set the uncanny mood. While the soundtrack and effects are well done and really help with immersion, they still lack that bit of ‘oomph’ to truly put some mind-shattering terror into this title.
Gameplay
Euclidean is an atmospheric geometric indie ‘faller’ horror game with full Virtual Reality support. The various clickable items you can find in the starting scene, work as the game’s menu. The telescope directed at the moon opens up the Option screen, the rope the player character presumably used to get to the mountaintop works as the Exit while a strange stone relic is chronicling your progress and deaths. The game does not have a Start button. Instead it offers a very clever mechanic in which you simply have to follow the hint left right in front of you. Before you know it, you are drawn into dark murky waters, forever falling deeper.
The game consists of nine different stages to complete. In all of them the player character is slowly moving feet first towards blue cylinders or ‘doors’ on the bottom of each level. Nearly everything that crosses your path can kill you in an instant, so manoeuvring around these dangers is an absolute must. This is easier said than done however, as the fact that you are quietly drowning in liquid madness makes moving around feel like you’re the only being down there stuck in slow-mo. In other words, the experience is quite similar to being in one of those dreams in which you want to reach a certain point but every step you take is so heavy you could just as well be trying to walk through a mountain of sand. At first this lack of quick movement is a tad frustrating, but once you notice that yes, holding down the WASD-keys does have an effect, it is a welcome game-mechanic.
Though about everything in the game can be avoided my clever dodging, you will absolutely come across creatures that surprise you. One hit by these strange geometric constructs means instant death. Luckily there is the ability to phase through them by tapping E. Phasing is not without danger, however. For one, the power only last a very short time and two, it drains your energy, made clear by a colour change from green/blue to red, and thus needs to recharge with every use. Consecutive dodging of enemies is thus something you do with your body, not by jumping dimensions.
A last point that makes movement rather hazardous, is the water itself. Its cloudiness makes it extra hard to even see two feet in front of you. However, the portals you need to reach all seem to emit a very strong light that bursts through the levels at a certain frequency. When this happens, the complete stage gets illuminated, allowing you to see obstacles clearly – even if it’s just for a very brief moment.
Euclidean comes with an autosave function. Whenever a stage is cleared, it will appear on the standing tablet in the starting scene and thus be unlocked as a new starting point. Furthermore, the game sports three difficulties – six if you combine them with the permadeath option -, namely Hard, Nightmarish and Impossible. Yet, despite the efforts made to create mild psychological horror, this game’s strength actually lies in its visuals first, and within its lead up to and execution of the final stage only second.
It is very clear Euclidean was developed with virtual reality in mind. On screen, the immersion is easily broken by things happening around you. When using a VR headset however, it is a lot easier to suck in the ambiance and become one with this world.
Conclusion
The atmospheric ‘faller’ Euclidean promises to bring horror in unexpected ways. While it lacks the right spice to be truly scary, it does manages to convey a great series of emotions and moods while playing. Because of its striking visuals and slowly moving gameplay, it is clearly a game that won’t appeal to the big masses. However, we are positive it will interest players with a curiosity for strange worlds and artsy experiences.
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