Eden Genesis Review: Unwieldy Cyberpunk Platforming (2024)

There’s jumping, dashing, and laser sword slashing in the upcoming Eden Genesis, but what this cyberpunk platformer desperately needs is a reliable sensation of speed. Published and developed by Spain-based Aeternum Game Studios – responsible for the well-received metroidvania Aeterna Noctis and its roguelite variant Summum Aeterna – Eden Genesis’ challenging forebearers set the tone, but some peculiar design ticks make it feel more fidgety than freewheeling, and its leaderboard-oriented essence is at odds with its dragged-out narrative and limited length. Overall, Eden Genesis is a clumsy beast, a speedrunner showcase that feels too sluggish to satisfy.

The Aeterna games helped Aeternum Game Studios build a burgeoning fanbase in the indie circuit, matching finely drawn and detailed artwork with unique systems and sizable environments. Most recently, 2023’s Summum Aeterna refashioned the original’s game mechanics into a renewable roguelite with many hours of unlockables and upgrades, delivering a righteous reimagining of the studio’s work thus far.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Eden Genesis sees its creators exploring other themes and backdrops, with a cyberpunk environment packed with sci-fi and pop culture references tucked into every visible corner. Lightly animated cutscenes and cascading deus ex machinas give the story a distracted quality, matching an abbreviated campaign that lessens the impact of the full package, even while select levels manage to balance the game’s best aspects.

Enter The Familiar Matrix

Eden Genesis' Narrative Heavily Borrows From Cyberpunk Classics

High-level hacker Leah is experiencing a strange ailment growing more and more familiar to her cybernetically upgraded kin in the year 2072: a deadly disease known as Synthetic Neurodegeneration, or “SND.” As explained in the abrupt intro, SND “fries your brain and has no cure,” sending augmented deck-jockeys like Leah to specialized clinics which offer a slight chance at slowing or alleviating this illness through an experimental treatment program.

Eden Genesis the game essentially plays out like an interactive version of that program. Leah’s mind gets absorbed into a virtual world known as Eden, and is then tasked with completing training modules, each of which purportedly repair a little piece of her brain and bring her closer to stamping out SND. Of course, the entire situation isn’t quite as benevolent as it first appears, but the virtual cyberspace does mean that its relentless sci-fi Easter eggs sort of track, since the program aims to comfort the character with images and elements that seem familiar.

The game’s setting becomes a smart way to unveil its wider world, and every few training sessions are sandwiched between cutscenes and dialogue with Cora, Leah’s AI companion on her quest for better health. A few other NPCs emerge here and there, but Eden Genesis presents a focused narrative set mainly on Leah, whose brackish badass-with-a-heart-of-gold shtick is something of a cyberpunk trope on its own.

Puttering Around In A Cybernetic Wonderland

Time Trials Grow Frustrating With A Meager Set of Platforming Tools in Eden Genesis

It would be wrong to dub Eden Genesis another metroidvania, but Eden presents as a 2D overworld with many doors, with a few secret gewgaws and other interactions tucked away in hard-to-reach nooks of the map. As the player completes training sessions, they’ll learn the various platforming trickery that leads to a variety of lore-dump items and even special high-level challenges, but it should be noted that there are never any new abilities to learn or tools to obtain, so the game is a fairly static and rigid experience in that respect.

Eden Genesis' platforming gameplay features wall-running, ceiling-running, and air dashes, as well as a few token robot enemies that can be sliced with a laser sword to refresh jumps, a la The Messenger's critically acclaimed cloudstepping. There’s a limited-use laser blaster with its own unique applications, as well as a few combat training sessions, though these are infrequent, and arguably even more temperamental than the agility tests. In our playthrough, we did not encounter any other level format.

A primary problem with Eden Genesis is Leah’s momentum, which is hard to reliably manage at the best of times. A strange platforming concept here is her air-stomp maneuver, which can be used on highlighted sloped terrain to get a big temporary speed boost. It’s an unfamiliar mechanic for the genre and felt awkward from the start of the game onwards, though its of vital use for players who want to crawl up the online leaderboards and garner best times for each level.

Scoreboard Seekers Will Feel Catered To In Eden Genesis

Those Who Like Challenging Community Members Will Find A Lot To Love

Eden Genesis is assuredly built for leaderboard hunters, and even features downloadable ghosts and replays of other players’ successful completions to watch, similar to some racing games in that respect. It’s a fun feature that ably performs two functions: it helps players improve through observation, and it’s a great buffer to prevent hackers and glitchers from poisoning the scoreboard with their antics.

There are ways the speedrunning could be improved, however. It would be nice to automatically restart on a whiffed run; instead, players need to hold down a button to formally refresh the timer, with the game otherwise offering checkpointed revives that can’t be outright disabled. There’s no dedicated run button, so players have to rely on repeatedly pressing the controller's right trigger to add small speed boosts on flat terrain, something which never really felt sensible in practice.

To progress the story, training sessions must be completed to obtain tokens which eventually unlock other areas in Eden to explore. There’s a forgiving threshold for bronze and silver medals, though, so players who just want to see the story through can maintain average finish times to quickly progress. For speed-freaks, a number of uber-challenging runs can also be unlocked, gated via peak performance on previous levels, so Eden Genesis caters to multiple skill levels, at the least.

A Hand-Animated Sci-Fi Spectacle

Eden Genesis Maintains Aeternum Studios' Excellent Visual Design Standards

Eden Genesis’ presentation is generally quite strong, and totally in line with the studio’s previous games. Most everything looks hand drawn, though the interludes are bare-bones, with no mouth animations and plenty of cut corners. This is totally acceptable in terms of an indie project, but it does give the weird impression during cutscenes that characters are spouting internal monologues, rather than speaking to each other.

As for the game’s barrage of references, they can venture into wincing cringe territory. Some are jokey callbacks to the Aeterna games – Leah even comments “Wow, this franchise is awesome” at an in-game fourth-wall breaking gift shop – but there are Keanu Matrix stand-ins and other obvious odds and ends. These typically don’t add much to the story and come off as predictable cyberpunk dreck, and it doesn’t help that sections of narrative can’t be briskly skipped through, reminiscent of similar problems in Sanabi.

While Eden Genesis doesn’t appear to be missing chunks of content due to budget constraints, it also lacks depth.

While Eden Genesis doesn’t appear to be missing chunks of content due to budget constraints, it also lacks depth. Having a mere two different level types seems a missed opportunity, and the game would have been greatly improved by having more diversity in its playable content and interactive surprises. The level designs may change, but they all contain basic drones to kill, collectible score objects, and simplistic hazards, like bottomless pits and electrified floors.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

2.5/5 - "Fine" By Screen Rant's Review Metric

Eden Genesis has a rich pool of references to giddily point toward, but very little unprecedented innovation or personality to uplift its genre, and that’s a big problem. As a time-trials platformer, it’s only just about average in terms of control quality, creative hazards, and challenge level. For the latter, it leans more towards achingly precise triggers, but muddies this water with mechanics that are more frustrating than fun.

For example, laser floors that run to the corner of a structure can damage a player running underneath them. Heavy sword slashes that help Leah stay in the air have a significant delay, it’s difficult to initiate a jump after a laser blast, and swapping controls proved completely nonfunctional on our review build. Maybe the full release will update this last point.

And still, having just two types of testing sessions fails to infuse the game with interactive diversity, with the combat levels always less engaging than the agility variants. There’s also a dull QTE hacking minigame that can be eased through a settings option, and would be better off left out entirely. Eden Genesis could have benefited from some edits – both in terms of its verbose meandering script and its level design – and never quite gels into a satisfyingly sweaty platformer or a clever action experience. Leaderboard hunters will love the options at hand, but the rest will find this worth waiting for a sale, at best.