Everdeep Aurora Rewards Those Willing To Dig Deeper

By Elijah Gonzalez | July 9, 2025 | 11:00am

Video Games Reviews Everdeep Aurora

Everdeep Aurora Rewards Those Willing To Dig Deeper

Everdeep Aurora, the latest from publisher Ysbryd Games and the first from developer Nautilus Games, has a deep understanding of how satisfying it can be to unearth what’s been hidden. As you control Shell, a humanoid kitten looking for her missing mother, you’ll come across all kinds of treasures, like crystal deposits to fuel your machinery and ores that can strengthen your equipment. You’ll stumble on passageways and their optional challenges that reward unlockables, which make it even more gratifying to dig and discover. And most meaningfully, as you carve a path through this 2D landscape, you’ll meet an idiosyncratic group of characters who are also seeking shelter underground from an incoming meteor shower. It’s from these people that you claim the true gems waiting in the Everdeep: dark secrets that have been buried where no one will find them.

Shell’s journey begins promptly. She wakes up on a bench with nothing but a cryptic letter from her mom that explains how she’s gone ahead of her daughter to do something important, and that Shell should meet her in the shelter below. Luckily, Shell runs into Ribbert, a nice little frog man who lends our heroine a battered drill. Within a few minutes, we’re digging a big hole.

This intro is a good indication of what to expect from this 2D adventure on multiple levels, and with only a direction in mind (down), the onus is on you to explore this moody backdrop that feels like a long-lost Game Boy game. You use the drill to chunk your way through square blocks of dirt, uncovering crystal deposits that can be used to keep your machinery running smoothly. If you want to keep your equipment running efficiently, you’ll always be on the lookout for stations where you can convert these minerals into fuel—if you run out of oil, you can still dig, but nowhere near as fast.

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Additionally, there aren’t any enemies to fight, and there isn’t any combat to speak of, but you probably won’t mind because these depths have a strong pull. Beyond the inherent satisfaction of cutting a path with the rhythmic buzz of your drill, there’s also an abundance of points of interest. While the Everdeep goes down quite a ways, it’s fairly narrow horizontally, which helps create a sense of exploration without setting you up to get completely lost.

For instance, you’ll frequently find folks in need on your travels, like people looking for a bouquet of flowers or a missing blacksmith glove. The things they’re looking for can either be obtained from other characters or are tucked away in caves and structures accessed via entrances. Basically, you’ll snake down and up again, calling for Ribbert’s help to pull you back up to a checkpoint while you puzzle out how to appease a chain of quest givers who may reward the additional tools you need to break through increasingly dense dirt.

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On the surface, there isn’t a lot of mechanical depth here, with your main actions being to jump or dig. But thanks to the freeform nature of the exploration and density of discoveries, there’s rarely a dull moment. You’ll uncover upgrades that improve those two previously mentioned verbs, jumping and digging, alongside optional boons that range from additional fuel tanks for your drill to collectibles with some interesting implications. The trip is broken up by platforming challenges alongside the odd puzzle, both of which have just enough resistance to make them gratifying to solve—you eventually unlock platforming abilities like a wall jump and airdash that make movement even more satisfying.

Another benefit of exploration is that it lets you see more of this impressively presented world. If there was one element that made Everdeep Aurora stand out among the overwhelming number of game trailers from the past year, it was its look, with its color contrasts and square aspect ratio. Thankfully, that element very much didn’t disappoint. It’s a space presented through sharp pixel art that combines cute and foreboding imagery, as these (mostly) adorable animals delve into an intentionally forgotten history. When you come across new characters or locales, the color palette and soundtrack shift to match the mood, revealing a melancholic score that hints there’s something more going on here than just Shell searching for her mom. It all conjures an atmosphere of mystery, which is very much paid off by the things you discover.

Specifically, in between finding items that improve your abilities, you’ll be greeted with all sorts of allusions to this place’s true origin: you learn of worker strikes, a horrific civil war, and read multiple fables about an apparent “monster” that lives deep in the Everdeep. However, more than just acting as worldbuilding that adds flavor to this setting, these discoveries tie directly into what this game is ultimately “about”: fully reckoning with the unaddressed horrors of history. We come to understand how the facts here have faded over time, leaving only a myth that retains the core willful ignorance and outright xenophobia of the past. It takes quite a bit of effort to put these events all together, but that has the benefit of making it genuinely momentous when you finally do. Or, instead of making these connections, you can just complete Shell’s original objective and go home. It’s in letting us choose between remaining ignorant or seeking reparations for past injustices that the game’s exploration realizes its potential, both mechanically and thematically.

However, that said, there are a couple of pain points when it comes to delving into the Everdeep. For starters, you can only find the previously alluded to ending (there are four in total) by scouring every corner of the game’s most confusing area, a place that has as many doors as those diabolical Boo levels in Super Mario World. This final space also doesn’t really engage with its central drilling that much either, making for a stretch that becomes fairly annoying to navigate if you’re trying to uncover the full truth. And to top it off, I also ran into a few different bugs in this area, one of which required me to reset my console, which caused me to lose over 30 minutes of progress.

As for a broader issue, for some reason, the Everdeep periodically resets to its original state, covering up past tunnels you built in the process. While it makes sense to let players reset the state of the world, as otherwise you could easily set up game-breaking situations, the fact that these happen outside of your control undermines the central “I want to dig a big hole” appeal that comes with this type of game.

Still, despite these annoyances, Everdeep Aurora still makes for an engaging five to six hours. Not only does it nail the little gameplay touches to make the most of its spelunking, but it also trusts the player enough to let them make discoveries for themselves. What starts as a game about a cat digging a hole to find their mom reveals itself to be something more compelling as you excavate the truths of the Everdeep. If you’re willing to go deep enough, that is.

Everdeep Aurora was developed by Nautilus Games and published by Ysbryd Games. Our review is based on the Switch version (we played it on the Switch 2, specifically). It is also available for PC.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.