Creatures of Ava is the Palword x Zelda crossover we never knew we needed

Do you love petting adorable creatures and taking on the role of a hero who goes on to save the world? Well, this is the game for you: Creatures of Ava offers a captivating blend of a cute creature collection game with enough sass, musical flute puzzles, and adventure to have you completely invested in world-saving.

In Creatures of Ava, you play as Vic, who must rely on her empathy to save the creatures of Ava from the withering, a life-consuming infection ravaging the planets. Unfortunately for Vic, the locals don’t want her help—but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

One of the unique aspects of Creatures of Ava is you use a flute to tame the creatures of Ava. Each creature type has a unique note pattern, adding a musical puzzle twist to your gameplay as you tame these creatures. It’s tricky at first, but once you get the hang out of it you’ll be blasting out all the tunes off by heart.

While it sounds adorable, there’s a dark side to being such a talented musician. Once you’ve tamed the creature, you lure it to the designated bot that sends it to your mothership, where it can be saved. It sounds suspicious, and I’ll admit I felt like an awful pied piper luring these beautiful creatures away from their homeworld (and to safety). But it’s a necessity, or so the main character and the story says; I only played the limited-time demo and we don’t truly learn why the locals don’t like humans or their history, or why the withering is this be-all-end-all evil, so I am excited for the game to fully launch to uncover more of the mystery.

This limited-time free demo was available on Steam for the Steam Next Fest until June 17, and ran for around three hours. You can spend a good while taming and petting the creatures but there’s more to Creatures of Ava too, including unique skill lines, collection journals, and crafting. And you even get a magical staff to destroy the withering.

The only downside was you couldn’t customize your character, which did dampen things. For the most part, you could play how you want, explore as much as you desire, and pet as many creatures as your heart can take.

As a fan of creature collectors like Palworld, musical puzzle, action and adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, and a slew of exploration games, Creatures of Ava combines the best features of these titles into one unexpectedly deep, sometimes shocking, yet heartwarming game.

Creatures of Ava doesn’t have a release date just yet. However, its Steam store page states it’s expected to release sometime this year. If the full game ends up being even better than the demo, you’ll certainly want to keep tabs on this one.