Europa review: ecological reflections on a distant moon

Did you know that Studio Ghibli is named after an Italian plane? As the story goes, founder Hayao Miyazaki was inspired by a World War II aircraft called the Caproni Ca.309, which was used for reconnaissance in the North African desert. The plane was commonly known by its nickname Ghibli, which roughly translates to “south wind” in Libyan Arabic. The Ghibli wind is a current of fierce, hot and dry air that transports dust from the interior of North Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. For this reason, some have speculated that Miyazaki chose the name to indicate Studio Ghibli's intention to revolutionize the animation industry.

There's also a sense of wind in Europe, a game that seems to have been heavily inspired by the works of Miyazaki. But Europe's wind is more of a gentle guide than a disruptive force. It takes you down the main path, pushing you towards hilltops and towards gates to guide you through the world. It encourages you to linger and float over vibrant landscapes, giving you the opportunity to absorb their beauty and understand their inherent value. This is a game about flow and the importance of being in tune with the world around you. And, most ominously, it is a warning of the potentially dire consequences for the human race if we continue to separate ourselves from nature.

Set on one of Jupiter's moons in the distant future, Europa lets you play as Zee, a mysterious android boy who appears to be all alone in an alien landscape. Scattered throughout the world are pages from a diary, written by a man named Adam, who identifies himself as Zee's father. Addressing his son through the diary, Adam reveals that he is no longer alive and that Zee should visit him on 'The Island' if he ever starts to feel lonely. Hovering above the landscape and visible at all times, it is a vast levitating city that seemingly houses the last of humanity in Europe. To find answers about what happened on this strange moon, this is where you should head.

Thus begins a winding journey through the world of Europe, where stopping to admire the view is point type. There is no urgency to this expedition and the game is usually very interested in guiding you to magnificent panoramas. As you emerge at the top of a tower, the camera will pan outward, asking you to stop for a moment to admire the beauty of the Ghibli-esque world around you. This is a classic video game trick that I will never get tired of. Conveniently, these 'sight' moments also give you the opportunity to survey the area in front of you, allowing you to identify routes through the world to shiny, golden pages of the diary that reveal more of the story. With a jetpack on your back, you fly and glide between glowing blue spheres to collect fuel, like a form of human robot bumblebee. Although some faster segments of Europa remind me of Jenova Chen's Flower, for the most part, the flight movement is closer to that of Spyro the Dragon: short bursts of energy that must be carefully managed to reach high towers and platforms. He's cheerful and often gangly, but there's something about stumbling through the world that's quite endearing. There is definitely a knack to learning these flight mechanics and you become more efficient at using them with practice. It also doesn't hurt to find some hidden jetpack capability upgrades that can increase your airtime.

Although Europa evokes the illusion of an open world, it is actually structured as a series of broad levels, each of which has a very clear direction of travel. Advancing between these regions often requires you to solve puzzles, none of which are particularly difficult: you may have to park between disappearing blocks or activate glowing cubes hidden around the landscape. The intention here is not to present a set of challenging puzzles, but to encourage you to explore the world and develop an attachment to its natural elements. During these tasks, you will encounter many of Europa's creatures: strange fusions of technology and biology that form part of a unique ecosystem. As you learn along your journey, humans sent a terraforming AI to Europa to “prepare” it for human life, resulting in the creation of many strange and wonderful creatures. (Finally, a generative AI that did something useful.) However, within the programming was an instruction to avoid anything that could make the planet uninhabitable. When humans began to exploit Europe, this inevitably caused problems.

This element of friction, while a key part of the narrative, is one of the few areas where Europe falls a bit. Many levels require you to dodge projectiles from creatures, and it's easy to get stunned by them when you're low on jetpack fuel – something that severely disrupts the flow of the game and makes you feel like you're spinning around like a fish. . It's also a little irritating when you try to look at a newspaper page and find yourself being bombarded by rhinos. However, when they are No dropping explosives on your head, the creatures of Europe are truly charming. In one particularly memorable sequence, you enter an area whose layout seems almost underwater and fly past a whale-like mother and calf. It is serene and peaceful, accompanied by relaxing music and makes you feel intimately connected to the natural world of Europe.

Europa is a welcome game: you can float around its world in a single three-hour session, if you wish. However, even during this limited time, it can make you care deeply about its vibrant natural world. Europa offers several highlights about humanity's relationship with nature: As conveyed by that floating island, we have a tendency to see nature as something separate from humanity, rather than something to which we are intrinsically connected. We cannot continue searching for new planets, new areas to exploit, until we have first repaired our faulty relationship with nature, or the same old mistakes will simply occur again. It's something to keep in mind for the real world, as Agency prepares to send the Clipper probe to Europa to find out if this moon could be habitable. It's a launch that, ironically, was delayed due to the ferocity of Hurricane Milton: a storm made more violent by the effects of human-caused climate change. Thinking about the Europa video game, if its story suggests anything, it is that second chances for humanity are not guaranteed. Perhaps before seeking salvation in other worlds, we should first take better care of our own.

Future Friends Games provided a copy of Europe for review.