About The Game

Set in the 2060s as Earth faces total climate collapse, astronauts Ariane and Thomas are sent on the "Hope-01" mission to investigate Persephone, a frozen ninth planet at the edge of the solar system. After a catastrophic crash landing, the two are separated. The story follows their dual attempts to reunite while being stalked by a relentless, near-invincible entity known as the Nemesis. 

You alternate between Ariane—who handles high-stakes parkour and grappling—and the injured Thomas, whose gameplay is focused on resourceful investigation and environmental observation. The game features "grounded" sci-fi tools like oxygen management and a "Pathfinder" device to navigate shifting icy terrain and deadly weather. Taking inspiration from Alien: Isolation, the game features tense stealth sequences where you must use the environment to hide from a stalking predator. Unlike the experimental climbing in Jusant, traversal here is more automated, focusing on cinematic momentum and spectacle rather than technical precision.

History and Inspiration

Founded in Paris in 2008 by former veterans of Criterion Games, Ubisoft, and EA, DON’T NOD established itself as a studio obsessed with "identity" and "memory." Their debut title, Remember Me (2013), introduced their interest in cinematic action, but it was the 2015 breakout hit Life is Strange that defined their legacy as masters of choice-driven, atmospheric storytelling.

Over the last decade, the studio has expanded its horizons beyond episodic narratives, experimenting with action-RPGs like Vampyr (2018) and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024), as well as the meditative, wordless climbing mechanics of Jusant (2023). Aphelion represents a significant evolution of this trajectory; it marries the studio's talent for emotional, character-driven narratives with the high-stakes survival-horror mechanics typically found in "Triple-A" blockbusters.

To ground the game's setting, the team collaborated with the European Space Agency to ensure the environmental physics of the ninth planet, Persephone, felt authentic. Beyond gaming, Aphelion draws heavy inspiration from the "lonely sci-fi" aesthetic of modern cinema, specifically referencing the grounded realism of The Martian and the psychological dread found in the original 1979 Alien.

Critical Discourse and Player Feedback

Critics are currently divided, with the game sitting at a 68 on OpenCritic. While outlets like Worth Playing praised the emotional pull and "P.I. for hire" investigative breaks, others like I Dream of Indie have critiqued the "auto-platforming" for feeling like "AAA tropes in a trench coat." There is a near-universal consensus on Reddit (r/xbox) and among top critics that the sound design (by Amine Bouhafa) and the Unreal Engine 5 environments are "breathtaking" and among the best of the year. Early adopters on Steam have noted occasional stuttering and "wonky" animations, leading to a "Mixed" initial reception while players wait for a day-one patch. Community discourse on r/Games has centered on whether this shift toward linear, cinematic action is a good move for the studio, with some missing the branching choices of the studio's previous title: Life is Strange.

My Playthrough Impressions

Aphelion is beautiful. From the very first moment I crash landed onto Persephone, I was struck by just how good the game looked, how excellent the music, voice acting and audio were, and how the characters seemed believeable and real. I like the way the two characters get separated, land in different areas of the planet, seemingly miles apart, and have very different gameplay mechanics that keep things fresh. 

Ariane's climbing and traversal gameplay is mostly fun and easy enough to execute that it rarely felt stale or annoying. I especially liked her grappling hook and swinging across chasms. In contrast, Thomas' injury lends a believeable limitation to his movement that provides a good in-game reason as to why he controls so differently. I liked that the game switched between Ariane and Thomas, since that kept things interesting for me. Just as Ariane's gameplay started to get stale, the game would switch to Thomas, and when I was starting to get bored with his slower and more deliberate gameplay, it would switch back to Ariane. The timing felt perfect to me. 

Story-wise Aphelion doesn't do anything super new and interesting, but the few well worn tropes it uses fit the game well, and generally didn't bother me. I tend to be a sucker for stories where humans attempting to play God generally go badly, so I was all on board with the overall plot. The only real issue I had with the game was the last two chapters. Up to that point the sneaking sections, where Ariane has to keep away from the Nemesis creature, were just short enough to not annoy me, but man oh man did the devs turn that up to 11 for the two end chapters. I found the end gameplay to be very annoying and I almost gave up and didn't finish. The way the story is structured, I pretty much knew exactly how things were going to end, and I didn't anticipate some great plot twist (which is good, because there wasn't one).

When the credits rolled I was releived. Not because the ending is monumental, or greatly informs the narrative I had played over the past several hours, but because it was finally over. Those two ending chapters really left an unpleasant impression on me, and I would have had a much better experience if I had just stopped playing the game at the end of Chapter 9.