Everdeep Aurora is at once very simple and surprisingly dense. Its premise is simple: dig underground to find your mother. But the further underground you delve, the more the game shows its hand, with mysteries abound and more complexity with its narrative than its first impression would suggest.
You play as Shell, a young feline who awakes to find her mother missing. A note explains she’s gone underground to take care of some important matter and tells you to meet at “the usual place.” Shell obtains a drill and starts heading downward. A meteor shower has pushed almost everyone underground to seek shelter. This is a frequent enough event that it’s hardly remarkable anymore. Many have chosen to make their home underground instead, whether because they want to avoid the meteor showers altogether or because they can’t afford to live on the surface anymore, who could say.
A simple tale to start, Everdeep Aurora quickly expands its scope as you descend. Shell’s search for her mother is just one thread among many to chase. Very quickly you find drawings that imagine what the rumored monster lurking in the Everdeep looks like, documents hinting at tumultuous events long past that led to the current state of affairs, decrepit automatons buried deep in caverns. The steady unveiling of each new element of its world pushes you further into pursuing answers. The deeper I dug, the more invested I became in seeing where these threads led.
Crucially, Everdeep Aurora seldom gives up concrete answers to its mysteries, instead content to leave blank spaces for the player to fill in. It’s a level of restraint that only adds to their allure, giving up just enough info to see the shape of the full picture, but never all the finer points to fill in the details. Even its endings avoid giving anything close to a firm statement on the matter, every revelation merely fueling the wonder and uncertainty at the heart of the Everdeep.
It’s a choice that can come off as purposely obtuse, a denial of any closure in favor of mysteries for mysteries sake. But I think it works because so much of Everdeep Aurora is steeped in a quiet melancholy about the current state of affairs and the choices that led them here, a history that is hazy to seemingly everyone you encounter – or reluctant to talk about, perhaps. Vague references to wars over gems, a powerful resource that produces energy for most of the contraptions and infrastructure in the depths of the earth; the numerous roles automatons played in the past mostly forgotten, now revered as gods who may bring about salvation when separated from the context of their creation and purpose; or the rumors of the monster of the Everdeep and the ways it’s intentionally kept vague and amorphous, a supposed threat that exists only to scare people from looking too much into the depths of the Everdeep. It’s a sort of worldbuilding that adds texture rather than existing as a puzzle to be solved or lore for the sake of lore.
Everdeep Aurora is pretty carefree as far as digging goes. Your drill has limited energy you need to keep an eye on, but running out never prevented it from working in my experience (it just wasn’t as quick to destroy blocks of rock). Careful planning of your route down is still necessary so you can climb back up when needed. Shell’s movement is limited at first. It’s trivial to drill in such a way that makes backtracking inaccessible without proper foresight. The need to ascend is generally limited, maintaining access to save points or returning to characters with items they seek or updates on matters they’ve asked for your assistance with, but important to be mindful of all the same.
As Shell’s abilities expand, exploring the game’s space to its fullest becomes effortless. Traipsing back and forth through the underground helps uncover areas you might have missed on the first pass. Every time I thought I’d been thorough in my survey of the Everdeep, I’d inevitably find something I missed the past couple times I passed through each layer. The caverns and the small puzzles or platforming sequences they contained are where the game is able to let its movement shine. Where most of Everdeep Aurora’s obstacles come primarily from whether you thought ahead when drilling downward or not, these segments are more in line with classic jumping challenges. They aren’t terribly challenging in execution, but the joy of movement is enough to satisfy. Quickly jumping between ledges or moving platforms is just the sort of activity that is always fun no matter the context, especially when the movement itself is enjoyable on its own.
Everdeep Aurora gives back as much as you put into it. It can be a quick jaunt through an underground society as you follow a cat in search of her mother, or an ever expanding series of mysteries that slowly unveil the nature of the world and its history and what might come next. It’s a charming digging game either way. It’s not particularly deep mechanically, but its easygoing nature isn’t a drawback. It’s a world that is enjoyable to explore and luxuriate in, its inhabitants delightful.
Callum Rakestraw (he/him) is the Reviews Editor at Entertainium. You can find him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and his blog.
