Creatures of Ava is a beautiful game, full of puzzles and saving cute creatures. It even has a pet button! It has a few missable achievements but for the most part, the game will warn you about this! Completion takes around 20h.
Approximate amount of time to 100%: Around 20h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Not yet, I hope someone will make a nice map with where to find all the collectibles.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, but for the most part, the game will warn you about that.
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play on the story difficulty
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Ohh Creatures of Ava, you’re so beautiful and wholesome! I fell in love with the world-building and creatures already through the trailers and you didn’t disappoint in-game <3. Also, the main character looks so good, and the creatures… I’m so happy that there is a “pet” button (And even an achievement tied to petting them all)
In Creatures of Ava, you’re playing as Vic (Aka StrongLeg and many other variations) who goes to the planet of Ava to save the creatures before the withering takes over. Your landing is suboptimal, but it is a nice way to get to know one of the local inhabitants who will introduce you to the others. From there on out you’ll be on a mission to gather enough of each species to make sure they are not lost. To be able to do that and traverse the terrain, you’ll have to solve lots of puzzles to clean up small parts of the map.
Creatures of Ava is such a beautiful game. The world is huge and will keep you busy for around 15 hours, or more if you also go for 100%. Collectibles can be hidden very well with how big and detailed the world is, but it is just stunning! I also love the designs for all the different animals. Some designs will surprise you if you free them from the withering, but they are all so cute. Another highlight of Creatures of Ava is the music, so fitting and wonderful. and you’re playing so many nice songs on your flute while herding the creatures to the safe spot to teleport them to the Ark.
I love the story of Creatures of Ava. You’re kinda an obnoxious human being who doesn’t take the time to understand the world, however, that kinda is the point and will be addressed during the game. The game does such a good job of helping you understand more and more of Ava and telling you the story. I’m also thankful for a map and knowing where to go next. You’ll also unlock teleporters along your journey. and what took me a few hours to realize… you don’t have to teleport from portal to portal, you can teleport from anywhere on the map toward a teleporter. Which is so nice!
During my playthrough, I have encountered some bugs. Mostly creatures get stuck in walls/terrain but gladly if you leave the zone and come back, they are reset back to their original spot. And sometimes the button to talk to people didn’t work. I had this very badly by one specific sidequest, but after hopping around the NPC from all different angles, at one point it finally triggered. And the last one is that I’m missing one co-op action for the bird in the first area. I’m unsure if I did do the action with another creature and now missing just one point for that, or if it is a bug. I have wandered around the grassland for hours to find a spot to trigger it, but haven’t found it anywhere. This feels weird because for most of the creatures you have way more opportunities to do the co-op ability than is needed to 100% that entry in the Avapedia.
Creatures of Ava has a wide variety of different types of achievements. Most of them are for just completing everything and finding everything. There are also ones that do something with combat, like linkin 5 enemies together with your beam attack, or getting multiple status effects at once. And there are also achievements for finding all the collectibles. For the most part, the game does a great job warning you when you’ll move past a point of no return and that you should finish specific things if you want to before moving on. However, a few things seem to fall through the grapevines and can still be missed. As mentioned above, I missed early on one co-op action which means that I couldn’t 100% all the creatures in the game. This made me think I would never had a chance to 100% the game in that playthrough and I did ignore the later messages about the points of no return. I can say now, that the one with the bird I still missed. A little later at the end of the second area, I thought I found another bug because one of the required actions I couldn’t do, but this was on purpose. The game doesn’t make it clear but you can pet it later on in the game.
I hope someone will be able to make a nice guide where to find all the hidden things, I would love to replay the game with a guide at hand to 100% Creatures of Ava as it is such a wonderful game!
I give Creatures of Ava 4 out of 5 stars.
This review for Creatures of Ava was written on 8 Agust 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 27 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.