Endling: Extinction is Forever

Endling: Extinction Is Forever may not be perfect, but the story and experience it provides is a cut above.

Short but poignant; that’s ultimately what Endling: Extinction is Forever is. It perfectly conveys the horrors that mankind is capable of, and how it affects the land and animals around us. And it doesn’t pull any punches. There’s no happy ending here, no matter how good you are at looking after your cubs. It’s a game that should be played though, as its message is important. Just be ready to have your soul destroyed by the time the credits roll.

Play as a mother fox looking for her missing cub in a post-apocalyptic future where Earth is slowly dying. A scrappy survival tale with moments of tension and tenderness.

So, is this game recommendable? Most definitely. There can be a few finicky bits here and there; the traversal system can take some getting used to but is otherwise perfectly fine. It also crashed on one occasion, but subsequent early patches will probably sort that out. So, other than that, the game is most definitely one to recommend. Endling - Extinction is Forever is an experience worth having, and with a length of about four hours, it’s a tight, polished experience that doesn’t have any fluff.

Fraught, lonely, and emotionally devastating, Enderling: Extinction is Forever is a powerful example of the kinds of experiences that are only possible through the medium of video games.

Endling: Extinction is Forever is a poignant piece of emotive short-form storytelling, telling a tale of survival that isn’t just a conversation starter, but one that asks for immediate change.

Priced at $30 and only lasting two or three hours I wouldn’t normally recommend the game unless it was something unique and special. As a father of two, this story hit me in a way that few others have, though. If you’re looking for a game that is gorgeous, heartbreaking, and that tackles the most serious issue our and future generations will face then Endling – Extinction is Forever deserves your attention.

We need to start looking after the planet for fox sake.

Had more steps been taken to engage the player in the minute-by-minute gameplay or encourage replayability, the number below might have been a notch or two higher. As it stands, however, Endling is a game where the gameplay and mechanics are readily outclassed by its theming and presentation. It’s certainly an experience worth having, but not one that lives up to its full potential.

The events in Endling create sad emotions but they do not connect with how mankind is destroying the Earth. Events happen and we’re supposed to feel something because they happened, but the emotions are diminished because there is no connection to the message or the characters. It held up in the short five hours of play thanks to intriguing survival mechanics, but even those were messed up by an unfortunate, frustrating tug of war between survival and story progression.

Endling: Extinction is Forever hides a monotonous experience behind a striking visual aesthetic and an empty message about the relationship between humanity and the environment. The gameplay never fully commits to building the relationship between the mother and her cubs, which leaves the whole story feeling emotionless and bare. The end result is more “call of the mild” than Call of the Wild.