Play as a tiny sugar glider in your very own nature documentary. Glide among the trees, fight dangerous predators, and explore beautiful environments as you embark on a high-flying journey to save your family. Your adventures will take you across vast environments as you discover a vibrant world brimming with life. But beware of the dangers that lie ahead…

Play as a tiny sugar glider in your very own nature documentary

Set in an alternative near future, planet Earth has been transformed. An unknown disaster has resulted in the extinction of millions of species, including mankind. Those creatures that have survived have had to adapt, and quickly, in order to survive. You play as a young sugar glider whose natural habitat has been transformed into an inhospitable landscape. When your family nest is destroyed, you must follow your mother and baby sister across a once lush jungle to find a new home.

Away: The Survival Series is an enjoyable, novel game. It's an animal open world platformer, but with a huge twist. As you venture out into the wild your story, and that of the world around you is opened up thanks to a narrator, making this feel like an interactive documentary. In fact, the only way this could have been topped is if Sir David Attenborough had provided the voice of the narrator (not that the voice used isn't perfect)..

Hunt small prey, fight larger enemies

When I first downloaded this, before it was officially available to buy, I started a game and then discovered a rather annoying bug. I got to the part where you can fast travel to the area where the butterflies are. I decided to switch off after that part planning to come back later. When I fired up the game again a patch was available to download. After I'd installed that I went to my save point, only to discover that my sugar glider was stiff as a board and all I could do was hover it around, without being able to interact with anything. Rebooting made no difference, so I had to restart the game from the beginning.

While I did find this an enjoyable game, playing through the main story I couldn't help feel that this was just one long tutorial. But worry not, as there's a free roam mode too that lets you play as other creatures.

Not that it's really important, but I couldn't understand why this game was called "Away". "A Way", maybe - as in "Life will find a way", but Away? Is it because mankind has gone away? Who knows. As I said, it's not really that important.

A global event has seen the extinction of millions of species

As you roam through the environments you'll discover the island's unique biomes and explore relics of a world long gone. Hunt small prey, fight larger enemies, and use stealth and agility to sneak past apex predators unnoticed.

I loved the fact that this is different enough to set itself apart from other games, and challenging enough to keep you wanting to plough forward and uncover what happened to your planet. But I also couldn't help thinking it's not a game with much replayability. There's only so long you can wander around your environment attacking and hiding from other prey before feeling that you've experienced everything the game has to offer.

A unique open world platform game that has good production values but probably won't hold your attention all that long.

7

Darren Rea